la marseillaise

FIGURE 2.0 The anthem of the Marsei l la is, 1792.

C H A P T E

La Marseillaise: War or Peace Michel Vovelle

The destiny o f La Marseillaise" is food for thought. Whi le the song's origins are a fairly routine matter for historical inquiry, it is more interesting to ask how the Chant de guerre pour l'arme'e du Rhin, written in Strasbourg in April 1792, became the first modern national' anthem. How, in other words, did this song, unlike the songs asso-ciated with various European monarchies in the A g e o f Absolutism, come to express the consciousness o f a nation?

There are two sides to La Marseillaise: on the one hand it is a revolutionary tune that extols not just liberty but the values o f a new world, while on the other hand it is a war song that expresses, with a zeal sometimes deemed "sanguinary," the patriotic sentiments of an embattled nation. A s such, it might have remained the exclu-sive property o f French citizens, not unlike England's God Save the King, whose export markét outside the Commonweal th was nil. By contrast, La Marseillaise was recognized and even adopted by nineteenth-century liberal and national revolutionary movements around the world. Indeed, the French anthem is often considered to be one o f the few songs that belong to all mankind. It was a century before another song—L'Internationale—gained comparable renown.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about the composer of La Marseillaise: an officer o f engineers, Joseph Rouget de Lisle was an amateur musician, and La Marseillaise is the only work o f his to have survived. The song's words are sur-prisingly simple: the French national anthem is not a work o f impressive literary quality, at least not according to academic canons. A s a piece of music, moreover, La Marseillaise suffers from more than one imperfection, which professional musicians from Gossec to Berlioz have sought to correct.

M I C H E L V O V E L L E

It would be a mistake, however, to go overboard with criticism. La Marseillaise is not a monument o f naive art, and Rouget de Lisle was not an unconscious seribe whose pen was somehow guided by the genius o f Francé. Rather than ponder deep mysteries, w e need to search for historical explanations. W e shall therefore begin at the beginning: why was La Marseillaise written in Strasbourg in 1792? Having done that, w e shall go on to examine the astonishing destiny o f a song whose remarkable history is not over yet.

The Anthem of Les Marseillais and of the French Revolution

Nowadays , no one would pretend that a masterpiece such as La Marseillaise can be explained entirely in terms o f the circumstances in which it originated. It is impos-sible to understand Francé 's national anthem, however, without knowing something about the times in which it first captured the popular imagination.

O n April 20, 1792, revolutionary Francé declared war on the " K i n g o f Bohemia and Hungary." O n the night o f Apr i l 25 (the date is no longer in doubt) , Joseph Rouget de Lisle, captain o f engineers, wrote La Marseillaise in Strasbourg. In other words, the song was written immediately after news o f the declaration o f war reached the garrison city. Clearly, the work was the forthright response o f a proud patriot to the news o f the hour.

Beyond these immediate circumstances, however, the whole situation o f Strasbourg and Francé at that moment undoubtedly influenced the composer. T h e period from the declaration o f war on April 20 to the fali o f the monarchy on Augus t 10, 1792, was one o f the most eventful o f the Revolution, mobilizing the energies not only o f revolutionaries but alsó o f the nation. Rouget, insofar as he was able, served as a sounding board for the emotions not o f all Frenchmen—for he wrote at a time when demands for unlimited commitment were beginning to destroy an earlier consensus— but o f those who had thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the Revolution.

Other inspirational melodies and refrains had emerged in the Revolution's first two years. These were mainly adaptations o f popular dance tunes to which simple, flexible lyrics had been added. This was the case, for example, with the wel l -known fa ira, which, though already being sung before July 1790, really caught on in the climate o f militant celebration surrounding the Festival o f the Federation on July 14 o f that year. A simple, direct cry o f violence and hope, fa ira proved to be the ideál accompaniment to subsequent revolutionary journées, even after illusions began to vanish and unanimity disappeared. Another dance tune, La Carmagnole, gained popularity more slowly. Eventually it became the rallying song o f the sansculottes o f August 10, 1792. There were many versions of its lyrics, each tailored to a par-ticular moment. After the fali o f the Tuileries, for example, the song took on a com-bative, triumphant tone: "Madame Vető avait p r o m i s / D e fairé égorger tout Paris

La M a r s e i l l a i s e

[Madame Vető used to p romise /She 'd have every throat in Paris síit]." Together, the simple rhythms o f fa ira and La Carmagnole expressed the sentiments o f the revolutionary people in arms, engaged in struggle on battlefields inside Francé as well as outside. Somé commentators rather condescendingly contrast La Marseillaise with these partly improvised songs, which in their v iew were unsuitable as national anthems and too closely associated with "the mob" to command respect. Such judg-ments need to be reconsidered in the light o f the fact that fa ira and La Carmagnole not only played an important role in the Revolution o f 1789 but surfaced again in the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 and still later in the workers ' movement.

It is true, nevertheless, that the Revolut ion was still searching for songs o f a nobler génre to celebrate its newfound legitimacy. In the realm o f music as in all the arts, the revolutionary shock resulted in a changing o f the guard: somé musicians and songwriters feli silent, other sought new avenues o f expression, and still oth-ers, including somé who were at least partially self-taught, came to the fore. Rouget de Lisle belonged to the third group. Musicians were slow to abandon the religious set pieces that were traditionally played at state occasions: Gossec , for example, composed a Te D e u m for the Festival o f the Federation (July 14 ,1790) , and Catel , another prominent musician o f the per iod, wro te a D e profundis in honor o f General Gouv ion in 1792. If one had to fix a date when an official music suited to the needs o f the moment at last emerged from the profusion o f topicai popular songs, the best choice would probably be July 1 1 , 1 7 9 1 , when Voltaire 's ashes were translated to the Pantheon, for which occasion Gossec composed his admirable Peuple éveille-toi, a setting o f somé verses by the patriarch o f Ferney himself. This occasion, coming as it did in a period o f erisis between the king's flight to Varennes and the massacre on the Champ-de-Mars, provided an ideál showcase for a music "in harmony with the circumstances" thanks to its lofty style and use o f large choral masses, features that would be characteristic o f the golden age o f revolutionary music (1793-1794) . Earlier, in 1790, Gossec had produced a surprisingly innovative piece, the Marche lugubre, composed in homage "to citizens cut down in the Nancy affair" but not played until Mirabeau's funeral. T h e addition o f the choral element in 1791 foreshadowed future developments in revolutionary composition.

La Marseillaise was neither a popular song nor a piece o f official music. It was not an anonymous reworking o f a previously existing tune, nor was it the work o f a trained professional musician. A s a blend o f different genres, it was all the more capable of expressing the needs o f an age in search o f a new music and o f a music in search of new composers.

La Marseillaise was written by a man in a unique situation. Joseph Rouget de Lisle was born on May 10,1760, at Lons-le-Saulnier. In 1792 he was a captain of engineers stationed in Strasbourg. His parents were minor notables o f Franche-Comté. His father's people had settled in the region relatively recently, having been obliged,

because o f their Protestant faith, to move repeatedly in the Poitou and Languedoc regions. By special dispensation Rouget had been allowed to add the noble appendage de Lisle (or de L'Isle) to his name, a privilege that had allowed him, upon completing preparatory school, to attend the Ecole Militaire and later the engineering school at Méziéres, where Carnot and Prieur alsó trained. Between 1784 and 1789 he had served as an officer in garrisons from Mont-Dauphin to Fort de Joux. Garrison life was not very demanding, however, and the young officer had been able to pursue his talent as an amateur poet and composer in Embrun and elsewhere, working purely by instinct and without formai training. He was an enlightened amateur, though, and when the Revolution came he was drawn to Paris in part by curiosity to witness the important events taking place there and in part by a desire to make a name for himself as a writer and composer. He enjoyed a modest success: his Bayard dans Brescia was the only one o f his "troubadour" operas to be staged" and together with Grétry he produced Cécile et Ermance, ou les deux couvents, a play about "hypocrisy and hyste-ria among nuns" which was performed in 1792. A patriot and enemy o f prejudice, he alsó wrote a Hymne á la liberté and was an enthusiastic participant in the Festival o f the Federation on July 14,1790.

W h e n he rejoined his regiment in Strasbourg on April 1 ,1791, he thus found a sit-uation tailor-made for the composer, dilettante, and patriotic officer that he was . Strasbourg was a musical city, one o f whose orchestras was conducted by Ignace Pleyel . It was alsó a sociable city, whose decidedly if moderately patriotic bour-geoisie mingled with the troops o f the garrison, still dominated by officers o f the lib-eral nobility: de Broglie, d 'Aigui l lon, and du Chátelet served alongside Caffarelli, Desaix, Kléber, and Malet. T h e man who brought everyone together was the mayor, Dietrich, a wealthy industrialist and metál manufacturer who was alsó a man o f the Enlightenment, an academician w h o w a s — a s one still could be in 1 7 9 1 — o p e n -minded as wel l as patriotic. For the time being he remained a popular mayor , although he was not without enemies, and he kept an open table and a sálon where music mingled with patriotism.

T h e shock o f war that led to the writ ing o f La Marseillaise had a particular res-onance in Strasbourg, a frontier town where fresh memories o f the events o f 1790 in Nancy and, later, o f the king's flight to Varennes had fostered strong patriotic feelings early on. It was a city where émigrés and "accomplices o f Boui l l é" 2 were kept under surveillance, and where counterrevolutionaries organized "patriotic din-ners" at wh ich cor ros ive ly seditious songs were sung in French and Germán . Indeed, as Tiersot noted in 1915, counterrevolutionary tunes were so commonplace in Strasbourg that there "was really a need for somé good Frenchman to come and introduce a different note." But the patriotism of men like Dietrich, de Broglie , and d 'Aigui l lon was decorous in tone, even when it found opportunities for ceremoni-ous expression, as in the festival held in Strasbourg on September 25, 1791, to cele-


brate the acceptance o f the Consti tution, an occasion for which Rouget de Lisle wrote the lyrics o f a Hymne á la liberté that Pleyel set to music. B y the spring o f 1792, moderate patriots such as these, whether wealthy bourgeois or liberal nobles, no longer went unchallenged: the new Jacobins were already on the scene. " N o b o d y knew where they came from, but surely from Germany," wrote Tiersot , who was only half right. A m o n g the newcomers were Euloge Schneider and Laveaux, who attacked Dietrich while Rouget de Lisle waged a running battle with them in the local press.

La Marseillaise emerged from a consensus that was fragile to say the least. O n the day in question, April 25, the strains o f fa ira and La Carmagnole could be heard as an official procession made its w a y through the city, but the mayor and his friends disapproved of these vulgar popular tunes. A n address to the citizenry by a member of Strasbourg's Société des Amis de la Constitution struck a nobler tone: " T o arms, citizens! The banner o f war is un fu r l ed . . . . W e must fight, we must conquer or die. . . . Let crowned despots t r e m b l e . . . . Hasten to v i c t o r y . . . . March! Let us be free to our dying breath." Such were the words addressed to the battalions of "enfants de la Patrie" as they marched through Strasbourg's streets.

In other words, the themes o f La Marseillaise were already on the lips of everyone in Strasbourg on April 25,1792. T o say this is in no way to diminish Rouget de Lisle 's accomplishment. Sixty years later, the moment was somewhat misleadingly immortalized for posterity: for the Sálon o f 1849, t ^ l e painter Pils depicted the scene in Mayor Dietrich's sálon when Rouget de Lisle supposedly f irst sang La Marseillaise. Historical accuracy was not one o f the painter's primary concerns, however. T h e facts were rather different (although in the great scheme o f things it scarcely mat-ters): at a dinner at the mayor's house attended by the city's elité and officers of the garrison, Rouget was asked to compose a song appropriate to the moment. The fol-lowing evening, in a state o f exaltation lubricated by champagne, the work o f an enthusiastic night was sung not by its author but by Dietrich himself, who prided himself on his voice: the career of Le Chant de guerrepour Varmée du Rhin, later to be known as La Marseillaise, had begun.

What Rouget composed was first and foremost a song o f war, in six verses with the following refrain:

A u x armes citoyens! Formez vos bataillons! Marchez, marchez, Qu 'un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons.

The song was aimed at the foreign enemy—that "horde o f slaves, traitors and conspiratorial kings," those cohortes étrangéres and, to complete the rhyme,/?halanges


mercenaires. A n d it was addressed to the people in arms: soldiers, heroes, and war-riors, by turns "proud" and "magnanimous," who were admonished to rally to the flags o f the fatherland to defend their fils et compagnes. Simply and forcefully, La Marseillaise established the clichés o f la patrie en armes for a long time to come. Is the song a bloody call to arms, as it has often been denounced for being? Much blood is indeed spilled in this "impure" anthem, spattering the banners o f the enemy while at the same time flooding the furrows of those who are defending their native soil. Ye t there is nothing blind or hateful about this carnage, which is directed only against the guilty:

Francais, en guerriers magnanimes, Portez ou retenez vos coups, Épargnez ces tristes victimes " A regret s'armant contre nous

For La Marseillaise was a revolutionary song even more than an outpouring o f national consciousness. It was aimed not just at foreign armies but at tyranny, trai-tors, and the "accomplices o f Bouil lé ," at "tigers who mercilessly slash their moth-ers' breasts." What was at stake was clearly stated:

Grand Dieu! Par des mains enchaínées Nos fronts sous le joug ploieraient? D e vils despotes deviendraient Les maítres de nos destinées? [Great God! Wil l chained hands slip Yokes over our brows? Wil l vile despots become T h e masters o f our fate?]

T h e song ends, moreover, with an invocation o f liberty, which warrants and jus-tifies the sacred love of a fatherland that is liberty's first refuge. It was this role o f a hymn to liberty that fitted La Marseillaise to become in short order the anthem of the Republic as well as the national anthem of Francé.

T h e song's words (despite the one now rather obscure allusion to the "accomplices o f Bouillé") are simple and generál, and its rhythm is powerful, unaffected, and martial. This unusual confluence o f elité and popular fervor reflects the tenuous alliance that existed in the spring o f 1792 between the patriotic elites (bourgeois and non-bourgeois) and the revolut ionary mass movement . In these circumstances Rouget de Lisle enjoyed a paradoxicai advantage over the professionals: though a cultivated man who took pride in his writing, he was nevertheless partly self-taught and not very prolific as a writer, a stranger to the republic o f letters. Perhaps that is why La Marseillaise is today the national anthem of Francé rather than the Chant du


départ by Méhul and Marie-Joseph Chénier. O f course this advantage alsó had its disadvantages: Rouget knew nothing about harmony. It was Dietrich's wife who first harmonized his melody, and her w o r k was later completed by Gossec and revised by Berlioz. Nevertheless, it can now be stated with confidence that two dis-puted issues o f musicological scholarship have been settled once and for all: the originality of La Marseillaise and the authorship o f Rouget de Lisle. These issues are not without importance, but they have been so widely and so thoroughly discussed that there is little point in rehashing old controversies. T h e y first came up in the lat-ter half o f the nineteenth century in a context o f political and nationalist contro-versy, and the positivist historians o f the early twentieth century squandered vast treasures o f scholarship in resolving them. For present-day musicologists such as Francois Róbert, they are no longer in doubt. T h e almost immediate success and widespread popularity o f the Chant de guerrepour l'armée du Rhin obscured the truth almost from the beginning: in fact, Grét ry wrote his friend Rouget to ask him who had written the music, while the Chronique de Paris attributed the tune to a Germán composer, thus launching what would later become a fierce cont roversy—among Germán scholars! A s w e shall see, however , Rouget ' s authorship was never seri-ously challenged during the Revolution. A s for the originality o f the tune, although it is easy to find the rather common sequence o f notes in the first measure (G, C , D , E) in any number o f tunes ranging from popular songs to Mozart ' s 25A Piano Concerto in C , it does not follow that Rouget was guilty o f plagiarism: the overall shape and rhythm of La Marseillaise make it a song unlike any other. Furthermore, the various tunes that Rouget is supposed to have plagiarized (an organ piece by Grisons, an organist from Amiens, and a piece composed by Forster and Reichardt in the Rhineland) have been shown to be adaptations of Rouget ' s tune.

In a different respect, however, Rouget did lose control o f the song he wrote in Strasbourg in Apri l o f 1792: it was taken up and sung everywhere until it became La Marseillaise, the property o f an entire nation. We can recount with a fair degree o f accuracy the stages by which the Chant de guerre de l'armée du Rhin made its w a y across Francé in the weeks that followed, changing its title en route. From its initial birthplace in Alsace , the music, with a dedication to Marshal Lückner, was copied and sent to Basel and Selestat. Then Dannbach, the publisher o f Strasbourg's news-paper, printed a vers ion, and the piece was sung at an official performance in Strasbourg on April 29. Paris learned o f it on July 23 through Huningue's column in La Trompette du pere Duchesne, and it was played at a dance on the ruins o f the Bastille. But the capital did not really warm to the song until the end o f the month, when the fe'de'rés from Marseilles arrived.

For the second incarnation o f La Marseillaise, we must turn our attention from Strasbourg to Provence. A patriotic song that originated in a milieu o f military offi-cers and moderate bourgeois patriots was now taken up in a very different context:


that o f the highly politicized revolutionary movement in the south o f Francé (from Marseilles to Montpellier), for which the home front—the overthrow o f the monar-chy and the battle against the Counterrevolut ion—would soon become crucial. T h e revolutionary facet of La Marseillaise was quickly accentuated as a result.

T h e route that La Marseillaise took from Alsace to the south o f Francé is not entirely clear, but in a period o f complex cultural exchanges there is nothing sur-prising about that. H o w did the song travel? Was it published in a "constitutional newspaper" or simply carried by commercial travelers? In any case, the fédérés o f Montpellier, w h o asked to jóin their comrades from Marseil les on their march northward to a bivouac outside Paris to which they had been summoned over the king's opposition in late July, brought Rouget de Lisle 's song with them. O n e o f their number, a man named E.-F. Mireur, sang the tune in Marseilles at we lcoming ceremonies for the Montpell ier cont ingent . Ricard and Micoul in ' s Journal des départements méridionaux printed what had come to be known as the Chant de guerre aux armées des frontieres, and the fédérés from Marseilles each received a copy before leaving for the capital. T h e y sang it at every stop along their route, and the martial image o f the soldiers thus came to be indelibly associated with the song they made popular.

It was in Paris that the song was most fully identified with those who sang it. T h e soldiers from Marseilles sang their tune on July 30, the day they arrived in the capital, and again on August 4 and in the days that fol lowed. T h e Chronique de Paris described the scene: " T h e y often sing it at the Palais-Royal, and sometimes in the intermission between two p lays . " Other newspapers corroborate these reports. A b o v e all, the song that could now legitimately be called the hymne des Marseillais could be heard on August 10, 1792, during the attack on the Tuileries. A permanent link was thus forged between the future national anthem and the fali o f the monar-chy, which ushered in a new phase o f the Revolution.

Rouget de Lisle 's creation had now moved beyond its author's reach and beyond the group responsible for its inception: de Broglie , d 'Aigui l lon , and Dietrich were among those who refused to recognize the "second revolution" o f August 10, and in the weeks to come they and others like them either lost their l ives or emigrated. Rouget de Lisle himself refused to accept the latest turn o f events despite the urg-ings o f Carnot and Prieur, fellow officers o f engineers. A s a result, he was relieved o f his duties and quit the army for a time, although he briefly returned to service later with the A r m y of the North. After leaving the army, he went to Paris to try his hand at the theater, and there w e find him in custody as a suspect at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1793. His life was never really in danger, however , and while in prison he wrote a Hymne á la raison for which Méhul supplied the melody. It was as though Rouget enjoyed a certain protection as the author o f the work he refused to call La Marseillaise, whose destiny was now its own.


T w o things now legitimized the song that the minister o f war on September 28 dubbed the hymne des Marseillais. Outside Francé 's borders it underwent a baptism by fire that made it the anthem o f the embattled but triumphant Republic, while internally it became the anthem of the Revolution.

To Francé 's soldiers at war on foreign soil, La Marseillaise stood for and was meant to elicit the enthusiastic support o f the nation. It is this aspect o f the national anthem that is probably best known and most frequently commented on. A s Grétry wrote to Rouget, "your Marseillaise is music out o f the mouth o f a cannon." T h e battles o f the fali o f 1792, which saved Francé from a first invasion, did indeed unfold to the accompaniment o f La Marseillaise. It was sung at Valmy along with Ca ira and La Carmagnole, and on September 29, Servan, the minister o f war, wrote Dumouriez that "the national anthem known as La Marseillaise is the Te Deum o f the Republic, the song worthiest o f the ears o f free Francé." O n his motion, the Assembly voted to celebrate victories with La Marseillaise instead o f Te Deum. O n October 14, La Marseillaise was played in Paris at a civic celebration at the Statue o f Liberty honoring the French incursion into Savoy. In Savoy itself, Montesquiou's troops received an enthusiastic reception from the people o f the royaume des mar-mottes (marmot k ingdom) , including variations on La Marseillaise that included such lines as "the Savoyards, a peaceful people," a musical translation of the official policy o f "make war on the castles, leave the cottages in peace."

Such variations on the six verses o f La Marseillaise were rare. Now, however, as the Revolution was beginning to broaden, a seventh verse was added. This verse, which begins "Nous entrerons dans la carr iére /Quand nos aínés n 'y seront plus [We will embark on our ca ree r s /When our elders are gone] ," took and became part o f La Marseillaise that was passed on to posterity. Various names have been proposed for the author o f these lines: was it an abbé named Pessoneaux, a patriotic teacher from Vienne who supposedly had his students sing the new lines, or a Norman by the name o f D u Bois, whose claim to the honor Tiersot found more persuasive? In any case, the graft took, perhaps because the young, who would one day be called upon to replace their fathers in arms, had begun to play an increasingly important role in civic celebrations.

The fortunes o f La Marseillaise in late 1792 matched those o f the victorious army. In October , Brunswick evacuated Verdun, and in November , French forces con-quered Belgium: " O n the morning o f Jemmapes," Michelet wrote , "La Marseillaise took the place o f brandy." Participating in the battle were two relatives of Rouget de Lisle, one o f w h o m died a glorious death while the other acquitted himself with honor. La Marseillaise was sung by troops on the road from Mons to Brussels and Liége. O n December 2 the anthem was played at a ceremony marking the planting o f a "liberty tree" in downtown Liége. Meanwhile, a group of artists and musicians (including Lai's from the Opera, Chéron, Renaud, and Gossec) was sent on a patri-


otic mission to familiarize audiences in Brussels, An twerp , and Ghent with "the sacred song o f liberty."

La Marseillaise accompanied the army on bad days as well as good. It was heard when French forces suffered reverses in the spring o f 1793, at Neerwinden , for example, on March 18. And it could alsó be heard when things took a turn for the better that autumn at Hondschoote, where Jourdan sang it to galvanize his troops, and then again at Wattignies in October. Indeed, to enumerate the instances in which French troops were reported to have sung La Marseillaise would be to reel off a list o f the victories w o n by the soldiers o f Year II: Wissemburg , Spire, W o r m s , Geisberg, and finally Fleurus. Contemporaries keenly felt an intimate bond between La Marseillaise and their victorious struggle, a feeling they expressed in redundant, at times nai've terms: "Send me a thousand men," wrote one generál, "or the score o f La Marseillaise." And another wrote: "I have w o n the battle. La Marseillaise was in command at my side." Carnot took a broader v iew: "La Marseillaise has given the Fatherland a hundred thousand defenders." But such judgments were not exclu-sively French. Foreign observers were alsó struck by the anthem's power. A m o n g the various accounts o f the French garrison's departure from Mainz on July 25,1793, as the guns sounded their salute over the strains o f La Marseillaise, the one that stands out is that o f Goethe, who, ever since Valmy, had to be counted as one o f the foremost observers o f the "gr ipping and awesome" spectacle o f revolu t ionary Francé at war. But many other witnesses attest to the surprising favor that the new French anthem enjoyed among the generál staffs o f Francé's enemies, whether out o f curiosity or a taste for novelty. It was even reported that one enemy generál gave orders that La Marseillaise should be played repeatedly as a w a y o f needling the con-tingents o f French émigrés who served under him.

If w e wished to multiply examples, we could easily extend this survey to the sea by mentioning the partly true, partly mythical story o f the heroic sacrifice o f the Vengeur du Peuple off the coast near Brest on 13 Prairial, Year II. But let us pause to take stock instead. Many o f these stories come from scholars such as Fiaux and Tiersot, who, writing as they did during World War I, sometimes painted larger than life. For Fiaux, for instance, La Marseillaise was a hymn to Francé's "natural bor-ders," a national anthem attuned to the martial temperament of the French. More per-ceptively, however, he alsó linked the importance o f the national anthem to the new art o f war that French troops were improvising on the battlefront. La Marseillaise was the battle hymn o f masses o f troops whose enthusiasm made up for their inexperi-ence. It alsó served to bind the new battalions o f volunteers together with existing military units. Fiaux makes the point, even if his style is dated: "It [La Marseillaise] cast all the provinces together in a single mold."

For the purpose o f exposition, I have distinguished between what one o f the scholars mentioned above called "La Marseillaise o f the frontiers" and "La


Marseillaise of the crossroads." T o somé extent this distinction is artificial. T h e story o f the Marseillais anthem's acceptance at home, in Paris as well as the provinces, is distinct from the story o f its acceptance by the army, however. Listen once more to Grétry, writing to Rouget de Lisle on November 4, 1794: "Your Marseillais verses A l l o n s enfants de la Patrie ' are being sung at every show and every Street corner in Paris. Everybody knows the tune because they hear good singers singing it every day." La Marseillaise was thus an element o f the "cultural revolution" that has been described as a central feature o f the revolutionary process. "La Marseillaise of the crossroads"? Shorn o f its pejorative connotations, the expression is not inaccurate: La Marseillaise could be heard outdoors. It was sung at an early date in front of the Statue o f Liberty at the Tuileries, and (although there are those who would prefer not to remember it) it was sung on January 21,1793, at the foot o f the scaffold where Louis X V I was beheaded, when the people celebrated with singing and dancing, just as they had celebrated the overthrow o f the monarchy on Augus t 10,1792. The now popular Marseillaise set the tone for part o f the Revolution's creative output. T h e musicologist Constant Pierre points out that two hundred o f the three thousand songs in his catalogue use the tune of La Marseillaise. A s many as twelve verses were added at one point or another, but none remained for very long. Significantly, however, the song was rarely parodied, even though the bacchic Marseillaise de la Courtille was sung as early as November 1792. A n all but definitive seven-verse version was fixed in 1793 when Bignon and later Goujon published the words and music. T h e lapidary title La Marseillaise took hold at about the same time.

It is difficult for us to appreciate the importance o f theaters in this history. In the patriotic theaters o f the time, the audience actively participated in the spectacle, and between plays there was often singing or somé sort of musical intermezzo. In Year II, La Marseillaise was often sung along with Veillons au salut de Vempire and Le Chant du de'part be tween plays with titles such as Les Salpétriers répuhlicains, La Parfaite Egalité, La Liberté des négres, Toulon soumis, and even Les Capucins aux fron-tiéres. Such Parisian theaters as Montansier, Feydeau, Paris-Moliére, and Théátre-Italien often featured the singing o f La Marseillaise, sometimes spontaneous, sometimes not, depending on who was in charge. Official action helped to encourage this practice: in August 1793, for example, the Assembly issued a decree ordering that series of free performances be staged in Parisian theaters.

It is hardly surprising, then, to learn that an entire show was built around La Marseillaise. O n September 30, 1792, the Opera put on a musical with words by Citizen Gardel and music by Gossec. T h e score actually combined Veillons au salut de l empire and La Marseillaise as accompaniment to an originál play, which opens in Rousseauist fashion with a scene of people celebrating their newly won freedom. The people 's enemies threaten to take this freedom away, however. A soloist issues a warning: "Citizens, suspend your games!" T o the accompaniment of Veillons au


salut de Vempire, a pantomimé o f warfare was then enacted around the base o f the Statue o f Liberty, "the only deity that Francé reveres." T h e play ended with La Marseillaise sung solo by Lai's. Or , at any rate, the first four verses o f the song were sung, interrupted by the arrival on stage of children dressed in white tunics (prefig-uring the "Couple t des Enfants" that would be added later). T h e children sang: "S'i ls tombent nos jeunes h é r o s / L a térre en produit de nouveaux."

T h e action, or more accurately, liturgy, then proceeded with an authentically reli-gious sequence, in which a chorus o f women kneeling before the Statue o f Liberty sang " L ' A m o u r sacré de la patrie." T h e silence that follows this worshipful act is broken, however , by sounds o f war: drums, trumpets, and simulated cannon fire herald the arrival o f a contingent o f armed volunteers. A t this point, culminating the scene o f collective enthusiasm, the audience chimes in with a repeat o f the refrain, bringing the Offrande a la Liberté to an end. T h e performance marked a new depar-ture in the theater: it was a kind o f staged festival, a collective psychodrama reliving the entire history o f the Revolution in a kind o f Rousseauian ideál, a celebration in which all boundaries between performers and spectators were abolished.

Even this kind o f celebration remained behind closed doors, however , so that it is hardly surprising to discover that the true glorif kat ion o f La Marseillaise occurred elsewhere, in the context o f the revolutionary festival itself. Except for Tiersot , the historians o f the national anthem have made little o f this. The fact remains, however, that the tune o f La Marseillaise together with words by Marie-Joseph Chénier played a key role in the Festival o f the Supreme Being on 20 Prairial, Year II. More than one histórián may have had reasons for not wanting to recall this occasion, for which a mock mountain was erected on the Champ-de-Mars. T h e ceremony took place around this central prop. Its climax came when trumpeters stationed atop a col-umn gave the signal, at which point three thousand voices, backed by two hundred drums and salvos o f cannon fire, sang the chorus o f the national anthem.

In other words, La Marseillaise was finally established as the national (and revolutionary) anthem during the Jacobin or Montagnard period o f the Revolution, in the time between the battle o f Fleurus and the Festival o f the Supreme Being. O n 4 Frimaire, Year II (November 24,1793) , the Convention ordered that "the hymne de la Liberté [shall be] sung at all republican spectacles, on décadis [the tenth day o f the ten-day revolutionary "week" ] , and whenever the people may require it."

T h i s date, however , is not the one general ly cited as the date on wh ich La Marseillaise became the official anthem of the French Republic. Most historians refer instead to another session o f the Convention, on 26 Messidor, Year III, in the Thermidorian period (which to historians in the early part o f the twentieth century no doubt seemed more respectable than the Jacobin period). This o f course came after the Trea ty o f Basel , but, more than that, it alsó fol lowed the end o f the Revolution's violent phase, and the deputies o f the Convention were once again able


to see the virtues o f a national anthem that had temporarily fallen into disgrace. A performance o f the hymne des Marseillais before the Assembly elicited enthusiasm for "these remarkable sounds, which have been forgottén for somé time now." Jean Debry, a respected spokesman, captured the generál feeling o f the moment:

What I want is for us to restore to the national spirit the energy and warmth that it possessed in the halcyon days o f the Revolut ion, the energy that, six years ago today, on July 14, struck the first blow against tyranny and that, on August 10, heralded tyranny's downfall with the civic song w e have just heard.

The decree o f 26 Messidor, Year III, establishing La Marseillaise as the national anthem, had the effect o f sealing the alliance between the patriotic and republican aspects o f the national song. It was during Thermidor and the Directory, in a context o f counterrevolutionary reaction, that La Marseillaise first became a sign o f defense o f the Revolution and adherence to its values; the régime 's adversaries took up a different song, Le Réveil du peuple, which quickly gained acceptance as a counter-Marseillaise. This would not be the last time that opposing factions symbol-ized their conflict by adopting different songs.

I shall refrain from offering aesthetic or morál judgments about these two works lest I betray a certain preference for one over the other. Nevertheless, it must be said that the lines written by Souriguiéres, a vaudevilliste at the Théátre Feydeau, and set to music by G a v e a u are little more than a maniacal call for counterrevolutionary vengeance:

Háte-toi, peuple souverain, D e rendre aux monstres du Ténare Tous ces buveurs de sang humain . . . Ou i nous jurons sur notre tömbe Par notre pays malheureux D e ne fairé qu'une hécatombe D e ces canniables affreux . . . [Sovereign people, hasten T o deliver up to the monsters o f Tainairon Al l those quaffers o f humán blood . . . Yes , w e will swear on our graves, By our unfortunate land, Not to rest until w e have made a sacrificial offering o f Those frightful cannibals . . ..]

This call to massacre was indeed effective during the months o f the White Terror o f Year III, when revolutionaries in places such as Lyons , Marseilles, A i x , and Tarascon had their throats síit by royalists belonging to the so-called Compagnies de


Jéhu and du Soleil. Let us turn to a future monarchist o f 1814, Charles Nodier, who as a young man offered this description o f the clash o f rival songs that accompanied the massacre of former "terrorists" in the south o f Francé:

It was all strangely like the executions carried out by cannibals, and, just as with savages, the dreadful sacrifices were accompanied by the sound o f music. T h e killers sang Le Réveil du peuple in ever louder and more savage tones, while the chorus o f La Marseillaise died in the mouth o f each new victim.

Not surprisingly under the circumstances, the decree o f 26 Messidor—a defen-sive move by a Thermidorian régime anxious to avoid being overwhelmed by the forces o f reaction—provoked violent retaliation against the Jacobins by the jeunesse dorée led by Tallien and Roveré.

Open warfare between Le Réveil du peuple and La Marseillaise raged not only in cafés and on the streets but above all in the theaters. Patriotic actors and singers such as Talma, Laís, and Dugazon vied with royalists such as Molé, Lainez, and Gavaudan. Royalist "commandos" came to blows with Jacobins and other patriots on the defen-sive. T h e disturbances triggered by the decree affected the Convention itself when the Assembly Guard was attacked by royalist gangs and ordered to play Le Réveil du peuple. T h e pressure gave the Thermidorians pause: when Lanjuinais asked that the decree be rescinded, Jean Debry responded with praise for "the truly national tune that our triumphant heroes are singing," and a few days later Boissy d 'Anglas mustered up the courage to denounce Le Réveil du peuple, a song that not only celebrated the Ninth o f Thermidor but had served in Lyons and elsewhere as a signal for "blood-letting." T h e Conventionals tried unsuccessfully to shut off debate by prohibiting singing in theaters. In the end, the riots in the theaters and Street gatherings that often ended in attacks on republican troops led to a crisis that was finally resolved on 13 Vendémiaire, Year III, by the defeat o f the Paris royalists.

The repression of the royalists did not put an end to the troubles, however, and the battle be tween Le Réveil du peuple and La Marseillaise continued under the Directory. T h e decision to permit a resumption o f singing in theaters only hardened the opposition between patriotic theaters (such as Lais's Opera) and counterrevolu-tionary ones (such as the Théát re Feydeau) . In N ivőse , Year IV, the Di rec to ry sought to end the debate once and for all by issuing a list o f four songs "cherished by republicans" and declaring that only these could be sung. T h e four authorized songs were La Marseillaise, fa ira, Le Chant du départ, and Veillons au salut de l'empire. Indeed, the singing of at least one o f the songs on the list was made compulsory, while Le Réveil du peuple was banned. These regulations were not easy to enforce, however. Barras describes in his memoirs how the generál charged with enforcing the order in Paris—his name was Bonapar te—made nightly visits to theaters in


order to address the audience personally: "Citizens, let 's sing La Marseillaise and

administer a lesson to the Chouans." A l t h o u g h battles over La Marseillaise continued for a time in Paris and the

provinces, by the end o f the Directory Le Réveil du peuple was fading into oblivion. In the meantime, republican festivals had spread La Marseillaise. It was served up in a variety o f guises along with patriotic rhetoric of every sort imaginable. T h e minister of the interior, Francois de Neufchátel, even proposed an adaptation o f the hymne des Marseillais for the Festival o f Agr icu l tu re : "Aux armes, laboureurs, poussez vos a igu i l lons /Marchez , marchez, qu'un boeuf docile ouvre un large sillon. [To arms, farmers, goad your oxen o n , / A n d may your docile animals open up a broad furrow.]"

A l though somé people complained about such trivialization o f the national anthem, it helped to make the song familiar to all. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that this was the time when the French began to learn La Marseillaise; they have never forgottén it since.

One reason that the song remained popular was that it still had the power to gal-vanize the energies o f the army and was still associated with French military vic to-ries. It was sung in the first Italian campaign, and it was played at the funeral o f Hoche in Vendémiaire, Year V I , and o f General Joubert, who was killed at the battle o f N o v i in Year V I I . Ambassadors became accustomed to hearing the French anthem. It retained its power among Jacobins across Europe , from the Batavian Republic to Switzerland, where the Vaud rose against the domination of Bern in 1798 to the strains o f La Marseillaise; the same thing happened again later in Genoa. In Florence, Romé, and elsewhere in Italy, Italian Jacobins rallied to the sound o f the French anthem.

Yet it was alsó to the strains o f La Marseillaise that the last holdouts o f the Council o f Five Hundred tried in vain to regroup on the night o f 18 Brumaire, Year III, even as Bonaparte 's coup d'état was sounding the death knell o f the Republic.

Ebb and Flow: The Adventures of a Revolutionary Song

For nearly eighty years, the destiny o f La Marseillaise in French history was one o f advances and retreats, o f long periods o f silence punctuated by rebirths and revivals. This regular alternation was only fitting for a song that had lost nothing o f its revolutionary content or power to mobilize the masses: this was both its fortune and its misfortune. Misfortune in that the thoroughgoing identification o f La Marseillaise with the central idea and memory o f the French Revolution led to its proscription by authoritarian governments wary o f democracy: the Empire, the Restoration, the July Monarchy (whose grounds for rejection were different from those o f the


Restoration), the Second Empire, and the so-called government o f Morál Order. Yet alsó fortune, because La Marseillaise survived underground in the memory o f the people, and gained from the experience.

That very enrichment o f the content o f La Marseillaise may have been responsi-ble for certain ambiguities in its recurrent revivals. Governments were wel l aware of the song's power to mobilize the people, and they were therefore tempted to revive it in periods o f crisis or distress: in 1814 after the imperial army suffered its devas-tating defeats, during the Hundred D a y s , in the turbulent period between 1830 and 1833, during the international crisis o f the 1840S, and in the period leading up to the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. But these manipulative uses o f La Marseillaise, somé more successful than others, do not teli the whole story. T h e old song was more than ever a song o f revolution, and it could be heard each time a portion o f the people rose in rebellion: in 1830, in 1848, in 1870, and, last but not least, in 1871 under the provisional government and the Commune .

If the history of revolution inside Francé was sporadic, La Marseillaise remained unremittingly popular outside Francé, where it served as a rallying point for various emancipation movements. A t somé point in the 1840S, however, the international-ism o f the liberal bourgeoisies in various countries gave w a y to a rather haughty brand o f nationalism, which sometimes took a dim v i e w o f cultural artifacts imported from abroad. Despite this, La Marseillaise retained its subversive power and remained a symbol o f revolution throughout Europe and beyond.

After Brumaire, Bonaparte sought to rid himself o f the Revolution's troublesome musical legacy. A l though La Marseillaise was played at Mont -Cen i s and on the march to Marengo, it disappeared from the record thereafter. T h e restoration o f order under the Consulate and Empire left little room for music with subversive overtones. T h e songs now sung at official ceremonies, such as Vive VEmpereur and the Air des grenadiers frangais, were pale substitutes whose melodies never etched themselves into the national consciousness. T h e period did, however, produce a new kind o f military music: tunes such as the Marche de la garde consulaire á la bataille de Marengo and the Marche d'Austerliti proved suitable as accompaniments for a con-quering army. In somé respects this new music did draw on certain aspects o f the rev-olutionary tunes, just as Napoleon's tactics benefitted from what the revolutionary armies had learned in their campaigns. In the political realm, however, things were not so simple. It was through a sort of subterfuge that the imperial régime was able to recycle a revolutionary song with lyrics written by A . Boy, surgeon in chief of the Armée du Rhin, in 1791 and set to a melody by Dalayrac ("Vous qui d'amoureuse aven tu re . . . " ) under the title Veillons au salut de l'empire. Gossec had already blended these same lines with La Marseillaise in his Offrande á la Liberté. T h e imperial government hit on the simple expedient o f capitalizing the e in "empire" (signifying "state" or "fatherland") to make "Empire," thus appropriating the revolutionary


song for its own purposes. T h e ruse was effective, although it left the meaning o f the chorus rather ambiguous, not to say ludicrous: "Liberté, liberté que tout mortel te rendé hommage /Tyrans tremblez, vous allez expier vos forfaits [Let all mortals pay homage to l iber ty/Tremble, tyrants, for you will someday pay for your crimes]."

Wha t else could be done, though? Quite early on, the First Consul had in fact commissioned a Chant des combats from Rouget de Lisle, who completed the song in January 1800. It was a mediocre tune, however , and not l ikely to supplant La Marseillaise. By this time, however, the composer had more or less joined the oppo-sition to the Empire, a change o f heart as significant for Francé as for Rouget as an individual. After taking part in military operations under the Directory, including Quiberon, the officer-composer had bided his time in various staff assignments. He was convinced, rightly or wrongly, that Carnot had it in for him, and he was bittér about his lack o f recognit ion by the republic o f letters. Later, he attempted to embark on a diplomatic career by having himself accredited as a redundant repre-sentative to the Batavian Republic.

He w a s a free man, however , on 6 N i v ő s e , Year V I I I ( D e c e m b e r 15, 1799) , when he wrote to Bonaparte, w h o m he had met several times, a letter notable for its republican frankness: "Are you happy, Consul? I can ' tbe l ieve it." This was fol-lowed by a critique o f the new régime 's shortcomings, which even at this early date had not escaped Rouget ' s notice. Rouget later voted no on the referendum to make Napó leon consul for life. In 1804 he returned to the attack in terms even more solemn than before: "Bonaparte , you are destroying yourself, and what is worse, y o u are destroying Francé along with you. . . . W h a t have you done with Liber ty? W h a t have y o u done wi th the Repub l i c? " T h e imperial government placed Rouget under surveillance. He lived in poverty, d ividing his time between Paris and his family home in Franche-Comté, and he was followed by the police, w h o suspected him o f contacts wi th republican conspirators such as Genera l Malet, to w h o m he was vague ly related. Rouget ' s fate under the Empire was typi-cal o f that o f many republicans; reduced to silence, they met in small groups where they clung to their convictions in priváté.

La Marseillaise alsó figured in a tragic episode o f the imperial years during the Battle o f Berezina. Amid the chaos and slaughter, the emperor supposedly galvanized his troops by personally singing the fírst few lines o f Rouget 's song. Somé soldiers rallied, but in the end the imperial initiative proved futile. T w o regiments (said to be the Ninth and Tenth Chasseurs) responded with a desperate, mocking chorus o f Malbrough s 'en va 't-en guerre, a tune by then more than a century old but revived by none other than Marie-Antoinette herself on the eve o f the Revolution. T h e troops thus taught their commander a lesson in the limits of manipulation, but they paid a high price for the privi lege. Nevertheless, during the Hundred D a y s , when the Bourbons fled the capital and the Eagle soared once more, La Marseillaise reemerged

i


with its old revolutionary edge still intact. The confusion o f the moment is captured in a gibe by Rouget, a man not generally noted for his sense o f humor. After return-ing to Paris, he kept a close eye on events in the capital and reported to his friends back home in the provinces: "Th ingsa rego ingbad ly . . . . T h e y 're singing LaMarseillaisel"

In a more serious vein, Chateaubriand corroborated Rouget ' s account in one o f his reports to the fleeing king: " T h e people are singing La Marseillaise, and the red caps are back: they are putting them on busts of Napóleon. . . . T h e Revolution is coming back to life." This report attests not only to the fears o f the royalists but alsó to the perceived connection between La Marseillaise and the Revolution, with which it was identified.

N o doubt that connection accounts for Napoleon 's continued wariness o f the song, spontaneous singing o f which greeted him during the Hundred D a y s . O n the day after the Champ-de-Mai, he deleted the title from the official song list. Tha t did not prevent it from being sung in the ensuing weeks o f the Belgian campaign. Y o u n g Alexandre Dumas reported hearing it sung by soldiers. It was mentioned in dispatches from the battlefield at Ligny, and at Waterloo the old guard förmed up in a square to sing the old anthem. In the final stages of the Napóleonié adventure, when the revolutionary ideál rose once more from the ashes o f the imperial illusion, La Marseillaise reemerged along with it. A s Grouchy ' s troops took up positions outside Paris after Waterloo, they sang La Marseillaise, just as Brune 's troops had done outside Toulon.

T h e Restoration not only prohibited the singing o f La Marseillaise but even tried to expunge it from the historical record: in describing the battle o f Jemmapes, one military history o f the 1820S discreetly alluded to the singing o f "the military anthem of the day." T h e tribulations o f the emblematic hero, Rouget de Lisle, illustrate the weight o f prejudice that had accumulated against the tune he had written. In somé quarters he was criticized for having briefly entertained the hope that the restored monarchy might be liberal, a hope shared by more than one opponent o f the Empire. He was soon disillusioned, however, and when he finally settled in Paris in 1817 after losing what remained o f his small inheritance, he refused any and all opportunities for dishonorable compromise, of which in truth there were few. He was banned from the Bibliothéque Nationale and the theaters o f Paris. N o one even dared help him in his financial distress, and Nodier , who, having been his ally in opposition to the Empire, felt friendly toward him, declined to make a compromising gesture o f gen-erosity; even the D u c d 'Orléans felt powerless to intervene. Hence, in 1826, at the age o f sixty-six, Rouget found himself imprisoned for debt. His friends belatedly came to his rescue and secured his release, but not until he had been diminished by a stroke and made desperate enough to attempt suicide. He survived thanks to a few friends who stuck by him: Abbé Grégoire, Laffitte, Béranger, and Blein, who gave him lodging. By then, however, the political winds were shifting. In the final years


of the Restoration, liberals were emboldened, and the improvement in Rouget 's for-tunes was matched by an improvement in the fortunes o f La Marseillaise, which again appeared in public in an edition by subscription o f the composer's Cinquante Chants francais.

Partly as a philanthropic gesture and partly as a carefully calculated effort o f propaganda, the sculptor Dávid d 'Angers executed a bust and a large medallion o f the revolutionary musician, copies of which were sold by subscription beginning in June of 1830. Rouget de Lisle once again became a public personage just as La Marseillaise was once again catching on as a patriotic anthem, for it could be heard on the barri-cades in July 1830 during the "Three Glorious D a y s " o f insurrection that toppled Charles X from power. The romantic poet Barbier, author o f Iambes, described i n Z a Curée how La Marseillaise resounded in the oppressive heat o f that memorable July:

[Quand] dans Paris entier, comme la mer qui monte, Le peuple soulevé grondait, Et qu'au lugubre accent des vieux canons de fonté, La Marseillaise répondait . . . [ (When) , like a rising tide, people A l l over Paris reared up and roared,

A n d the lugubrious sounds o f the old Cast-iron cannons were answered by La Marseillaise . ..]

And it was not long before Delacroix offered a graphical depiction o f the scene in a painting explicit ly designated in the painter's catalogue as Liberty Singing La Marseillaise on the Barricades and Leading the People in the Battle of July.

Clearly, the old revolutionary anthem had not been forgottén. Thir ty years after Brumaire, the people o f Paris still knew the words and music. O f course the revival of the previous few years may have had something to do with this, but it seems clear that, for many people in Francé, the memory o f La Marseillaise had never faded. The same was true in Belgium, where liberals in Brussels gathered beneath the windows of French exiles (regicides banished by the government of the Restoration) to sing the French national anthem. In the Brussels revolution, La Marseillaise played almost as great a role as La Muette de Portici, which inflamed the crowd. Even across the Atlantic, in N e w York, the rapidly transmitted news o f the "Three Glorious D a y s " was spontaneously greeted by singing o f La Marseillaise. T h e outburst o f liberal feel-ing that occurred in 1830 in places as widely separated as N e w York , Poland, and Italy provides a yardstick with which to measure the by now worldwide audience for a song that expressed in plain language the aspiration of people everywhere to freedom.

T o return to Francé, it is not very surprising to discover that the government o f Louis-Phi l ippe, which, as its opponents alieged, was born on the barricades yet craved a less democratic sort o f legitimacy, took an ambiguous attitűdé toward La


Marseillaise. T h e new régime could not repudiate the song, and in any case people were singing it everywhere. Indeed, in the early days o f the July Monarchy, Louis-Philippe went about repeating, "I was at Valmy. I was at Jemmapes." T h e king was eager to restore continuity by promoting a certain image o f the Revolut ion: that embodied by Lafayette wrapped in the tricolor—an image, in short, o f a bourgeois Revolution that ended in 1792 and to which La Marseillaise, despite a few falsé notes, provided a fitting accompaniment. O n the other hand, this was music that smelled o f gunpowder and evoked the flames o f subversion. T h e régime therefore preferred La Parisienne, a tune writ ten in 1830 as a setting for somé verses o f Casimir Delavigne . Adopt ing the same approach that we encountered earlier in the case o f the Empire (which had tried to substitute Veillons au salut de l'Empire for La Marseillaise) and that w e will encounter again in the future, the government sought to promote the new song as a harmless antidote to the anthem of revolution.

For a while, however, going against the tide was out o f the question. Shortly after the July D a y s , Nourrit, in a revival o f revolutionary tradition, sang La Marseillaise at the Opera: the audience chimed in on the choruses, and in the surge o f emotion that followed the name o f Rouget de Lisle could be heard in the hall. Many people in the audience thought he was dead, but someone who knew the true story revealed that he was actually l iving in pover ty The impromptu psychodrama ended with the taking up o f a collection for Rouget, the proceeds from which were delivered to him at his home in Choisy- le-Roi . The end o f this edifying tale writes itself: impover-ished but with his dignity intact, the old man took the money collected on his behalf and donated it to a fund for wounded veterans o f the July D a y s and for the widows o f the dead. G o o d fortune never comes alone: although the D u c d 'Orléans under the Restoration had been unwilling to risk compromising himself for the composer o f La Marseillaise, Louis-Philippe, claiming that he had "never forgottén his former comrade in arms," awarded Rouget an annual pension o f 1,500 francs. It was a mod-est gift, but the bourgeois king was not known for being a spendthrift. O v e r the next few years the amount was doubled thanks to the discreet efforts of Rouget ' s gener-ous protector, Béranger. T h e popular songwriter wrote to his old friend: "At last you will be able to buy yourself a decent redingote for winter." In the stories o f Rouget and La Marseillaise, inextricably intertwined since the Revolut ion, w e thus see a mingling o f the grandiose and the trivial, not to say the sordid: from Liberty 's bared bosom exposed on the barricades in Delacroix 's painting to the winter redingote for the elderly composer in Choisy- le -Roi . For Rouget , time had run out: he died on June 26,1836, at the age o f seventy-six. His story did not quite end there, however. In death his destiny again became enmeshed with the destiny o f La Marseillaise: dead heroes are more easily managed than live ones. Still, now is as good a time as any to hazárd a judgment: Rouget was not the Promethean creator that he is sometimes said to have been, nor was he as colorless and politically inconsistent a figure


as is sometimes alieged, a man of minor talent transcended by his work and himself astonished by the offspring he had brought into the world. Beyond the image o f the miserable, forgottén poe t—an image o f the Romantic A g e — w e can make out Rouget as he really was: a man who continued to write poems and stories, who cor-responded with Meyerbeer and took an interest in Saint-Simonism. True, he is not a writer whom academics would call great, and Hugó and other poets were not above tampering with his famous lines. So what? Perhaps that is as it should be.

Let us return now to Paris in the aftermath of the July D a y s . La Marseillaise was on everyone ' s lips and would remain there until 1832 or 1833. It was sung when Louis-Phil ippe appeared with his family on the balcony in the Tuileries, and the king joined in at the chorus as a w a y o f betokening official acceptance of the legacy of '89 as well as demonstrating his common touch. It was only later, when members of the royal entourage published their pitiless memoirs, that the sly monarch was reported to have been faking: he had only mouthed the words . Was this just an idle anecdote, or does the story reveal the king 's true feelings? Readers will have to decidé for themselves.

In 1831 and 1832 La Marseillaise was sung in theaters everywhere in a resumption of a practice that dated back to the Revolution. In 1833, however , a change in the cl i-mate was noticeable. Shortly after the celebration o f the anniversary o f the July Days , another solemn ceremony was held on the Place Vendőme on July 28 to mark the restoration o f the statue o f Napóleon to its place atop its column. The next day, La Marseillaise was again sung at the Tuileries, but this time in a spirit not o f com-munion or patriotic complicity but o f revolutionary fervor: the singing o f the old revolutionary anthem beneath the king's windows was like a declaration o f war.

In Louis-Philippe 's prisons, which the trials o f 1834 filled with political prisoners, La Marseillaise once again became an almost seditious song. T h e prisoners seized on the anthem and the tricolor to demonstrate their feelings, indeed to enact an almost religious service: Raspail's prison memoirs refer to La Marseillaise as " T h e Evening Prayer," for it was in the evening that inmates gathered around the flag in the prison yard and sang the old revolutionary anthem. This was a moment o f high emotion, and even guards and warders had to kneel in respect when the words "L 'Amour sacré de la Patrie" were sung: this had been an all but official ritual since the Revolution. O f course the participation of guards did not prevent prison authorities from sub-orning provocateurs to incite inmates to move on to La Carmagnole and fa ira after finishing the widely respected Marseillaise; the prisoners' intentions could then be denounced as subversive. Republican inmates avoided the trap by unmasking the informers and locking them in their cells. Once again, the anecdote is revealing: it telis us something about the duplicity of the government and the police, who, being afraid to attack La Marseillaise directly, tried instead to tarnish its reputation. And it shows that La Marseillaise stood out from other songs associated with the


Revolution. La Carmagnole and fa ira remained subversive and revolutionary, while La Marseillaise, now widely accepted as a patriotic expression of "sacred love for the fatherland," was about to become truly the national anthem of Francé.

Not without hitches, however. Al though memoir writers teli us that the "hymn o f the Marseillais" once again became a seditious song after 1835, it was in 1836 that Rude completed his celebrated g roup o f sculptures, Le Départ, for the A r c de Triomphe de FÉtoile. Here the warriors, depicted in the ancient style in the nude, evoke the heroes o f '92, led by a shouting, or rather singing, Victory. To be sure, Delacroix 's "Liberty" is here replaced by "Victory," who alsó wears a Phrygian cap now surmounted by a Gallic cock. A n d instead o f redingotes and blouses, the warriors are now decked out as Romans—or Gauls. But it is important to note one fea-ture o f the group not evident at first glancé: namely, that the song that it calls to mind is not Marie-Joseph Chénier 's Chant du départ but La Marseillaise.

Rude 's sculpture is further evidence o f the government 's ambivalence about the memory o f Rouget de Lisle. Francé had not yet succumbed to "statue mánia": in 1838 a proposal to erect a monument to the composer in Paris was rejected. Nevertheless, Rude portrayed Rouget in one o f the friezes of the A r c de Triomphe almost as an anonymous hero, w h o can barely be recognized as part o f a large group.

In 1840 La Marseillaise made a comeback with the Thiers government (February-October 1840) during an international crisis over the so-called Eastern Question. The details o f this dispute, which pitted the Egyptian pasha Mohammed A l i , backed by Francé, against the Ot toman suhan, backed by England, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, are beyond the scope o f this essay. Suffice it to say that the issue grew from a Mediterranean conflict to a European one. T h e aggressive policies o f the English prime minister Palmerston were partly responsible for this, but so were the muddled and imprudent maneuvers o f Thiers , who sought an important international role for himself while at the same time hoping to make the public at home forget his stubborn opposition to liberal electoral reform by mobilizing French national pride for a foreign skirmish. T h e government toyed with the idea o f war, reinforced the army, and fortified Paris. T h e return o f Napoleon's ashes to the capital had revived memories o f the Empire, and Thiers , who went so far as to call himself "the humblest o f the Revolution's children," did not hesitate to evoke memories o f the heroes o f 1792 as he faced a coalition o f European powers allied against a bellicose and apparently self-confident Francé. It was in these circumstances that La Marseillaise once again came to the fore, partly as a spontaneous expression o f public feeling aroused by chauvinistic sloganeering and partly as a result o f government manipulation. T h e old revolutionary tune became what Bugeaud, with his own bluff brand o f military humor, described as an "anthem for special occasions." Performances were encour-aged not only in the Opera and theaters o f Paris, in keeping with tradition, but alsó in the provinces, at Rouen, Pau, Arras, and Le Mans. A special edition o f the national


anthem was published with illustrations by Charlet , an artist w h o specialized in depicting patriotic scenes and imperial troopers; Félix Pyat wrote the introduction.

This outpouring o f national more than democratic or revolutionary feeling (the government capitalized on the ambigui ty) had no immediate consequences but would prove to be o f considerable importance later on. Noth ing happened right away, however, because the Thiers ministry soon came a cropper: the king, who had been keeping a close eye on developments, had no desire to see a repeat o f 1792, o f which, in the words o f S. Charléty, he "did not have fond memories." In October he entered into negotiations with England, thus stabbing his incautious prime minister in the back. By 1841, La Marseillaise was suffering from the effects o f this shift in pol-icy: it was again out o f favor. Contemporaries were surprised, however, to discover that other countries, especially Germany, now had songs o f their own to counter the French anthem. Nikolaus Becker, a minor bureaucrat from C o l o g n e as well as an amateur poet, wrote a song called Rheinliedto make the point that "they [the French] shall not have the free Germán Rhine [Sie sollen ihn nicht habén, den freien deutschen Rhein] ." That this song met with enormous popularity throughout the Germán states from Prussia to Bavaria is a fact of somé significance. It was not the only such song: Schneckenburger's Wacht am Rhein called for the river's defense: " T o the Rhine, to the Rhine! W h o wants to guard the r iver?" These songs were just as aggressive as La Marseillaise though perhaps not quite as fervent, and French liberals as well as democrats found the implied threat disturbing. T h e y responded in two ways. Lamartine felt a need to revise La Marseillaise by purging its "sanguinary" aspect and substituting a "Marseillaise o f peace" and good will (May 1841):

Roule libre et superbe entre tes larges rives, Rhin, Nil de l 'Occident, coupe des nations, Et des peuples assis qui boivent tes eaux vives Emporte les défis et les ambitions . . . [Roll on, Rhine, Nile o f the West, Free and proud between thy broad banks! Goblet to settled nations and peoples who drink T h y rushing waters, sweep away their threats and ambitions . . .]

Th i s was the pacifist response, representing one possible strategy for the bour-geoisies o f the West. But it hardly needs saying that historians such as Jules Fiaux who wrote about La Marseillaise during World War I did not look very kindly on Lamartine 's lyricism. T h e y preferred, as more in keeping with the French character, the nonchalant and cavalier response that Alfréd de Musset offered a month later:

Nous l 'avons eu votre Rhin allemand, II a tenu dans notre vérre.


Un couplet qu'on s'en va chantant Efface-t-il la trace akiére D u pied de nos chevaux marqué dans votre sang? [We held your Germán Rhine, We held it in our glass. Does a marching song erase The proud prints our horses' hooves

Left in your blood?]

A tavern song, grumbled Lamartine, who was less conciliatory than he is often por-trayed as being. Nevertheless, beyond these oratorical duels over raised beér steins loomed a growing menace. T h e adaptable, durable Marseillaise o f 1792 was about to enter a new phase with the age o f nationalism.

Still, the days o f the fráternál Marseillaise, more in the spirit o f Lamartine than that o f Musset, were not over yet. T h e song enjoyed a brief flowering during the Second Republic. In 1848, a year o f revolution across Europe, the old revolutionary anthem could be heard in many foreign capitals. It was sung in triumph, and it lent a heroic touch to failure and defeat: in 1851, for example, the democrats o f Marseilles sang La Marseillaise to welcome the S.S. Mississippi, the ship carrying the defeated Hungárián insurrectionary Lajos Kossuth into exile in the United States.

Meanwhile, in Francé in the spring o f 1848, La Marseillaise once again became a song o f the people, an inevitable accompaniment to rallies and celebrations across the country. It was played, for example, when "trees o f liberty" were planted. A n additional verse, forgottén for more than half a century, seemed to capture the spirit of '48 with all its hopes and illusions:

Arbre chéri deviens le gage D e notre espoir et de nos voeux Puisses-tu fleurir d 'áge en áge . . . [Beloved tree, become the tokén O f our hopes and wishes: Mayest thou flourish through the ages . . . ]

It became fashionable to remember Rouget de Lisle: in May 1848 the newspaperZe Siécle published a capsule biography, a laudable and in a sense a patriotic effort, for it was in the same year that the Musical Gaiette o f Leipzig credited a Rhenish Jacobin named Forster with having written the words of La Marseillaise and set them to a tune by Reichardt. Shortly thereafter, the Gaiette o f Co logne attributed the music to an organist named Hamman. Thus began a series o f controversies that would con-tinue throughout the nineteenth century, as the work o f Rouget de Lisle was attributed to one composer after another until Julién Tiersot finally proved irrefutably


that it was indeed Rouget ' s work. This posthumous controversy over the authorship o f a work that was not disputed at its inception shows just how important a prize La Marseillaise had become.

N o one in Francé had any doubts about Rouget de Lisle in 1848. His memory was honored in Strasbourg, which bestowed the name "Rue de La Marseillaise" on the Street where the officer of engineers had lived. And at the Sálon o f 1849 a n e w parting by Pils portrayed "Rouget de Lisle singing La Marseillaise for the first time at the home of Dietrich, the mayor o f Strasbourg." It was a historical painting in the style of the day, a balanced, expressive composition showing the officer silhouetted against a screen and enjoying the undivided attention o f the mayor's family and friends—a mixture of intimacy and theatricality. The hero already seems to be striking a pose for posterity. Late-nineteenth-century biographers attacked the portrait's veracity: why did the painter not show Dietrich as the one who sang his friend's verses? For us,

FIGURE 2.1 The birth of La Marseillaise, Apri l 25,1792: Rouget de Lisle chantantla Marsei l la ise devantle maire de Strasbourg, Pils, 1849.


FIGURE 2.2 High points in the history of La Marseillaise: 1848, Rachel.

FIGURE 2.3

FIGURE 2.4

L» •ftRSEIUMSE, mmam • * T H E B E S * however , these criticisms miss

the mark, for Pils 's painting is noteworthy precisely because it established one o f the primary clichés of republican imagery.

The Second Republic, perpet-uating a tradition that dated back to the Great Revolution, turnéd La Marseillaise into a play. It alsó associated the song with a cluster o f other revolutionary songs, or at any rate other songs inspired by the Revolut ion, such as the Chant des Montagnards and the

1870, Mlle Thérésa. Choeur des Girondins. In the pre-1882, Mlle Agar. vious decade, passionate curios-

ity about the Revolut ion had produced a number o f histories,

and the same curiosity now gave rise to revolutionary fakery: one thinks of Marx's description of quarante-huitards wrapping them-selves in the trappings of the Great Revolution, just as the Jacobins themselves had done their business "in Román trappings."

T h e Girondins had sung La Marseillaise at the conclusion o f their real-life trial. Alexandre Dumas, whose Chevalier de Maison-

.... Rouge was performed in Augus t 1847, six months before the February uprising, portrayed them as singing a verse with which

readers o f Lamartine and many other Frenchmen identified: "Mour i r pour la Pa t r i e /C ' e s t le sort le plus beau, le plus digne d'envie [To die for the Fatherland/Is the most beautiful, the most enviable fate]." But even this must be credited to Rouget de Lisle, for Dumas borrowed these two lines from Rouget ' s Roland á Roncevaux.

T h e Choeur des Girondins did not replace La Marseillaise, which remained as pres-tigious as ever. Shortly after the February insurrection, the actress Rachel, then, at age twenty-eight , at the height o f her career, "represented" La Marseillaise at the Comédie-Francaise , just as the " l iv ing goddesses o f Year II" had "represented Reason. She did not sing the words but rather spoke them in a set that was at once spare and grandiose. The actress appeared on stage wearing an ancient-style white tunic and carrying a tricolor flag. Beginning slowly, she gradually worked up to a crescendo and ultimately abandoned herself to a patriotic frenzy. Then , recovenng her calm, the tragédián knelt and wrapped herself in the flag to deliver her sacred invocation, " L A m o u r sacré de la Patrie." It will come as no surprise to learn that the


performance, or rather service, was commented on in religious terms. "Rachel arouses a holy enthusiasm," wrote Caussidiére. Other critics, somewhat off the mark in my view, described her as "the Joan o f A r c of the French stage." Applauded in Paris, Rachel was greeted with a tri-umphant reception in Marseilles. She single-handedly raised La Marseillaise to a new levél o f national conscious-ness. It is instructive to compare her staging o f the work with the previ-ously described performance o f L'Offrande á la Liberté during the Revolution. That was a revolutionary tableau vivant; Rachel 's performance was an ardent prayer to the apotheo-sized fatherland, with the actress cast-ing herself as priestess.

O n the morning o f December 2, 1851, demonstrators hostile to Louis Napóleon Bonapar te ' s coup d'état gathered to sing La Marseillaise. Later, Napóleon III banished oppo-nents o f his régime to Cayenne , where they remained for up to fifteen years; as they were loaded onto the boats that were to take them into exile, the prisoners sang La Marseillaise.

During the Second Empire, the hymne des Marseillais was once more declared subversive. Just as Napóleon the Great had pro-moted Veillons au salut de VEmpire and Louis-Philippe had for a tune backed La Parisienne, Napóleon the Small opted for the trou-badour lyrics of Partantpour la Syrie, le jeune et beau Dunois. This

a laudable act o f filial piety: the song, alsó known by the s ' ii >i ter title Chanson de la reine Hortense, was written by his mother. 1 1 was, however, if not a lapse of taste, a failure of discernment (and not the only one of the régime). What chance did such ersatz

r " i s m stand of truly catching people's fancy?

FIGURE 2.5 1914, Ml le Chenal.

FIGURE 2.6 1918, Rouget de Lisle a t t h e head of the all ied armies.

M A R S É ILI

he


History, as everyone knows, repeats itself as farce; sometimes it stumbles over its lines. Just as in 1840, the Second Empire tried to reinvent La Marseillaise. In fact, no one had to reinvent it: it came back on its own, availing itself o f zones o f tolerance in the liberal Empire, especially after 1868. Al though those found guilty o f singing subversive songs could still be sent to prison, c lever lawyers such as A d o l p h e Crémieux sometimes pleaded with judges to listen to the entire piece before pro-nouncing sentence. In oppressive times such ruses are commonplace. But by early 1870 signs o f change were in the air. Henri Rochefort revived his censored newspa-per La Lanterne under a new title: La Marseillaise. Managers o f cafés-concerts sought permission to perform La Marseillaise—still, it is true, in vain. The declaration of war with Prussia on July 18, 1870, changed everything: the next day, Richárd, the minister o f war, ordered the director o f the Opera to arrange for La Marseillaise to be sung be tween acts o f La Muette. Echo ing Bugeaud ' s g ibe o f 1840 about the "anthem for special occasions" was Emilé de Girardin's "Everybody on their feet for La Marseillaisel"

Nothing was left to chance: the national anthem could be heard everywhere , not only at the Opera but alsó at the Opéra-Comique (where the singer was Gal l ie Marié, the first Carmen) and the Comédie-Francaise, where the actress Agar , copy-ing Rachel, "spoke" La Marseillaise, as well as at popular theaters like the Vaudeville and the Gaieté. In the caf'conc'oí the Saint-Martin and Saint-Denis quarters, Bordás did a popular version o f the song o f the hour. T h e music had aged. It no longer cap-tured "the spirit o f '92," according to old Auber, who was ten years old when La Marseillaise was written. But to the Emperor, who listened to a performance at Saint-Cloud in late July 1870, it seemed right.

T h e imperial La Marseillaise had its moments o f heroism if not triumph on the field o f battle at Mars-la-Tour, Vionvil le , and Rezonville. But w e alsó have an out-raged account by the nationalist writer and politician Paul Dérouléde o f Prussian fifers p lay ing a mocking Marseillaise as the defeated and humiliated garrison o f Sedan marched before them.

T h e provisional government restored the revolutionary anthem to its former place o f honor and established its primary symbolic meaning. La Marseillaise was sung on March 18, 1871, before the Hotel de Vil le in Paris. Dur ing the siege, the Parisian battalions took it up as they launched their offensive o f April 2. Dur ing the Commune , La Marseillaise became more than ever the song o f the people in arms. T h e actress A g a r gave yet another interpretation, this time for wounded fédérés at the Tuileries shortly before the onslaught o f les Versaillais.

After the defeat o f the Commune , La Marseillaise was not officially banned. It became a republican rallying song, and there are reports o f its having been sung on May 17, 1877, to celebrate the defeat o f Mac-Mahon the day before. Despi te pol ice harassment, onlookers and participants at Thie rs ' s funeral sang it in


September o f that same year in what amounted to yet another demonstration o f republican unity.

Triumph and Its Dark Side (1879-1918)

In the transformation o f La Marseillaise from revolut ionary song into national anthem, the period that begins in 1879 a n ^ e n d s with the First World War was cru-cial. T h e very triumph o f La Marseillaise exposed it to new dangers: of distortion by its proponents and rejection by its adversaries, who could no longer identify with the sentiments it expressed. In the period o f nationalist confrontations that followed Francé 's defeat at the hands o f Prussia in 1870, such an outcome may have been inevitable, for the emphasis was now on the narrowly patriotic and indeed aggressive aspects o f La Marseillaise with its call to arms, while the song's revolutionary and democratic content was played down. Thus , behind the apparently unanimous support for La Marseillaise and the tricolor, there was deep-seated uneasiness; the temporary nationalist compromise achieved its bloody climax in the Union Sacrée o f 1914—1918, as a nation o f workers struggled to find its identity in the anthem of the triumphant bourgeoisie. What was seen by the end of World War I as the "crisis o f La Marseillaise" developed slowly against a background o f officially declared unity.

A new battle for the Republic raged around La Marseillaise from 1878 until Mac-Mahon's resignation in early 1879. Now, when the anthem was sung in parádés and theaters, it signified an unambiguous commitment. In Nantes, a city located, signif-icantly, on the edge o f the once counterrevolutionary Vendée region, a performance of Marceau ou les enfants de la République drew protest from counterrevolutionary military officers. T h e deputy from Nantes, Captain Laisant, himself an officer but a republican, joined with political associates to file a bili proposing that La Marseillaise be made the national anthem of Francé. T h e Chamber o f Deputies debated the issue on January 25, 1878, only to reject the bili. But the day o f reckoning was merely postponed, given the magnitude o f what can only be called popular pressure in favor of the proposal. For the opening o f the Exposition Universelle o f 1878, President Mac-Mahon, who was conscious o f Francé 's need for a national anthem, decided to set a reliable team to work creating one: he asked Dérouléde to provide the words and Gounod the music for a production whose theme was to be Vive la Francé! T h e only performance o f this stillborn masterpiece was apparently at the opening of the exposition. Meanwhile, La Marseillaise triumphed.

Mac-Mahon's departure in late January 1879 precipitated matters: in a historic ses-sion on February 14,1879, a t which Gambetta presided, the Chamber at last voted to make La Marseillaise the national anthem of Francé. The coronation was no triumph, however. Like the Republic itself, the new anthem achieved its victory by stealth: the Wallon amendment described La Marseillaise in restrained and even veiled terms. In


restoring the song's privileges, the minister o f war, General Gresley, invoked the decree o f 26 Messidor, Year III, which had never been rescinded. Even so, the now official national anthem did not triumph without difficulty. Speaking for the monar-chist opposition, the deputy Le Provost de Launay poured ironic scorn on a song that had been the anthem of the Commune as well as the Revolution: " Y o u will invite sov-ereigns to Paris to hear La Marseillaisel"

And that, indeed, was what happened in the years that followed: La Marseillaise became the obligatory accompaniment to Bastille D a y celebrations. One saw this in Paris, where in 1880 a M. Cernesson, president o f the municipal council, hailed the song in terms redolent o f the period as "the day's she-lion." One alsó saw it in the provinces, for example in Cherbourg , where Jules G r é v y and Gambetta went a month later to inspect the fleet and were greeted by a band playing La Marseillaise and by processions o f young girls wearing white dresses with tricolor sashes: the staging, reminiscent o f the festivals o f the Revolution, was o f course to celebrate the triumph of the Republic. In the same spirit, Charles de Freycinet, President du Conseil , inau-gurated a statue honoring Rouget in Choisy- le-Roi on the day after Bastille D a y in 1882. His speech summed up the significance o f La Marseillaise for a Third Republic still anxious to secure its legitimacy: "La Marseillaise is the hymn o f the fatherland," a legacy that reminds o f "the heroism o f our fathers." More than that, it was part of a larger program of national rebuilding and education, "a source o f strength, a tokén o f honor, and a lesson for al l ." For this late-nineteenth-century statesman, La Marseillaise encapsulated a peculiarly French brand o f patriotism, a patriotism that rejected territorial expansion and held out an ideál o f liberty to other nations:

Foreign peoples themselves appreciate the sentiments that inspire us when w e keep the holy flame o f patriotism alive. T h e y know that La Marseillaise is not a war song and that the Republic is a government o f concord and tolerance. T h e standard that Francé raises today is not a b loody one—not an étendard sanglant. It is a flag o f progress, o f civilization, and o f liberty.

This speech was o f course a prototype for other speeches for future occasions. There was no shortage of opportunities to celebrate the national anthem. It provided the sonic backdrop to the Centennial o f the Revolution in 1889 and for the Exposition Universelle o f 1900. T o be sure, the pacifíc tone at times gave w a y to a more bel-ligerent attitűdé, or to terms o f warning, as when Raymond Poincaré was called upon more than twenty years after Freycinet to give his own reading of La Marseillaise:

A s passionate as one may be for peace, I do not think it ill-advised o f us to keep our sacred love for our fatherland alive at all times, with the idea that w e may sooner or later be forced to repel aggressors by hastening to arms and forming up our battalions.


Song of peace or song o f war? The Republic that stood fast behind the fortress of La Marseillaise had no interest in pursuing the issue; it chose instead to emphasize one aspect or the other at different times. Perhaps that is why somé early-twentieth-century musicologists fought so hard to establish the French sources o f La Marseillaise and to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Rouget de Lisle was the composer. T h e issue was settled in the first decade o f the century by the positivist scholars Constant Pierre (author o f Les Hymnes et chansons de la Revolution francaise) and Julién Tiersot (who wrote a history-biography o f La Marseillaise and its composer Rouget de Lisle).

Quite apart from this debate o f scholars with all its nationalist ulterior motives, La Marseillaise became a sacred monument to the national genius o f Francé, a mon-ument that invariably commanded respect. There was little appreciation now for the old wish, often imputed to Victor Hugó but actually stemming from Lamartine, to purge the anthem o f its bloodier sentiments. When the journalist Maximé Formont canvassed his readers in Augus t 1906 on the question "Should La Marseillaise be rewritten?" he received this response from Paul Doumer : "La Marseillaise is the national anthem o f Francé. It is untouchable." Louis Fiaux, who wrote a history o f the national anthem in 1918, was less laconic: "La Marseillaise must remain the sword at Francé 's bedside. Those who propose to tamper with it should keep their hands off, lest they do somé damage."

Steps were taken to induce this precious capital to bear fruit, apparently with somé success. Between 1880 and World War I, the government made an effort to teach people La Marseillaise, thus ensuring an unprecedented levél o f popularity. T h e minister of war commissioned an official military orchestration, and the minister o f public instruction ordered that schoolchildren be taught the national anthem in school. The triumph o f the Third Republic's schools was celebrated to the strains o f La Marseillaise, which was played at the year-end ceremonies at which school prizes were awarded. O u r grandfathers sang all seven verses and bowed deeply when intoning the words " L A m o u r sacré de la Patrie." Their children sang only the first verse, occasionally adding the sixth and seventh. T h e selection is significant: at a time when Francé dreamed of vengeance against Germany, the emphasis was placed on sacred love o f the fatherland" and on the hopes invested in the younger generálion through whom revenge would be achieved ("Nous entrerons dans la carriére").

The success o f this popular pedagogy should not be underestimated, even though we shall soon have occasion to discuss resistance to La Marseillaise. T h e national anthem was associated with the loss o f Alsace and Lorraine at a time when another song featured a loyal fiddler from the lost provinces:

Ils ont brisé mon violon Parce que j 'avais l'áme francaise


Et que sans peur aux échos du vallon J'avais joué La Marseillaise . . . [They smashed my violin Because my soul was French A n d fearless I played La Marseillaise Amidst the echoes in the glen . . . ]

People in all segments o f French society thus became familiar with La Marseillaise, which could be heard at festivities in rural villages, on important national occasions, and even at international meetings. This widespread exposure was not without its odd paradoxes, however. True, people rejoiced at the sight o f Czar Nicholas II listening to the French national anthem with hat in hand at a time when the song was banned in Russia as subversive. Yet while French military bands never went as far as the musi-cians of the czar's Imperial Guard in playingZcz Marseillaise at an elegiac pace, indeed in what the French ambassador called a "bucolic" fashion, Ludovic Halévy noted that "La Marseillaise for sovereigns" was generally played maestoso, perhaps in the hope o f making the piece a little more respectable. A s the beginning o f the twentieth cen-tury approached, "the tempó slowed increasingly."

W h a t Ha lévy described as "La Marseillaise for sovereigns" others called "the oratorio Marseillaise." After 1900, the national anthem began to draw criticism even within the French elité, reflecting what somé critics did not hesitate to call a "crisis." Maximé Formont 's survey o f 1906 was another sign o f this, although most of the readers who responded to the journalist's query sought to reaffirm the sacred char-acter o f the national anthem and clearly showed no interest in pursuing the causes o f the malaise.

Their reluctance need not stand in our way, however. Before 1879, the strength o f La Marseillaise lay in the fact that it was a rallying point for all sorts o f subversive and rebellious sentiment. It is perhaps rather facile and superficial yet nonetheless legiti-mate to conclude that the official adoption o f the song as Francé 's national anthem, as the priváté property o f the Third Republican bourgeoisie and official music suit-able for any occasion, deprived it o f the distinctive flavor it had once possessed for the masses. What began as a revolutionary battle cry had become an instrument o f national pride in the A g e of Imperialism: it was a bittér pill to swallow.

A s a modern working class began to form in Francé and to engage in social and political struggles, it began to distance itself from a song with which various popular movements had identified up to the time o f the Commune. Michelle Perrot 's important study o f strikes by French workers between 1870 and 1890 allows us to witness this change as it was happening. The documentation is rich, thanks to the close watch that the government and police kept on the hundreds o f strikes that took place in this period. What did striking workers sing? A t first glancé one is tempted to respond La Marseillaise, which is mentioned in nearly forty percent o f the reports. Not surpris-


ingly, La Carmagnole was a close second, being mentioned in more than twenty percent o f the cases. Thus up to sixty percent o f the strikes derived their music from the songbook o f the Great Revolution. In fact, the figure should be even larger, since eight percent o f the remainder can be classed under the head o f "patriotic or revolutionary songs": the Chant du départ was included in this group along with various contemporary tunes such as Vive la Sociale, La Chanson des mineurs de Carmaux, Hűit Heures, and Le Drapeau rouge. T h e record of these twenty years is already instruc-tive: it shows that the proletarian revolt matured in the shadow o f the French Revolution before developing its own forms o f expression. La Carmagnole, more popular in its origins and more insistent in its demands than La Marseillaise, occupied a surprisingly important place. A glancé at the official chronicles o f the major revolutionary episodes o f the nineteenth century would not have revealed the song's underground survival. If w e look more closely at the dates o f the strike reports, w e discover that toward the end o f the period La Marseillaise actually declined in popu-larity to the point where it was surpassed by La Carmagnole: the latter is mentioned twenty-three times between 1887 and 1890; the former, twenty. O f course the sam-ple on which these figures are based remains limited. Can any valid conclusions be drawn from it? Yes , because contemporary observers alsó remarked the change and commented on it. In 1895, for example, Leyret had this to say about one such work ers' rebellion: " T h e songs were o f the most insolent sort, punctuated by choruses o f La Carmagnole. . . . This went on from ten at night until six in the morning. Never once did anyone call for La Marseillaise, and nobody thought o f singing it."

Still a favorité during the huge parádés o f the 1880S, still pungent with subversive potential under the government o f Morál Order, did La Marseillaise begin to lose out to La Carmagnole, a song with which workers could more easily identify? W h e n workers did sing La Marseillaise, it was generally associated with other songs more specifically identified with the working class. Just as the slogans "Vive la Revolution!" and "Vive la Sociale!" began to supplant "Vive la République!" after 1885, so, too, did La Marseillaise lose its privileged position as a working-class ral lying song. T h e contest between La Marseillaise and La Carmagnole would ultimately be decided by the arrival o f a third contender, L'Internationale, which was written in 1888 by Eugéne Pottier and Pierre Degeyter and performed by a Lille chorus, La Lyre des Travailleurs. Al though L'Internationale gained popularity within the workers ' move-ment throughout the remainder o f the nineteenth century, it did not immediately emerge as a rival to La Marseillaise. Both songs were sung on the Place de la Nation in 1899 when a monument to the former Communard Dalou was inaugurated, and both were sung again in 1903 at the Congrés des Amicales d'Instituteurs in Marseilles. But L'Internationale, which originally had been popular primarily in Guesdist circles in the north o f Francé, was adopted by the Congrés Unitaire, a convention o f various socialist groups held in Paris in 1899. It was sung again at the Congrés International


in Paris in 1900, but it was above all at the 1910 Copenhagen Convention that it C o n

solidated its position as the song of revolutionary working-class organizations. Jean Jaurés never repudiated La Marseillaise, however, as he explained in a 1903 article in La Petité République entitled 11 Marseillaise et Internationale," where he described ÜInternationale as the "proletarian sequel to La Marseillaise."

It wou ld be over ly schematic to imagine that there was anything like a duel between La Marseillaise and L'Internationale. Still, the end o f the nineteenth century offered a rich breeding ground for revolutionary music in the form o f a series o f associations and publications, the best known o f which is perhaps La Muse rouge. Here La Marseillaise flourished not in its official form but in non-conformist popular versions. It shaped other songs of rebellion even when its words and music were not directly used. Sometimes its call to arms w a s transposed into the new key o f working-class struggle. More often the workers ' songs took the opposite tack, call-ing for pacifism rather than aggression. Consider, for example, the first verse o f La Marseillaise fourmisienne, which was inspired by a massacre o f workers at Fourmies on May 1, 1891:

Allons forcats des filatures Le Premier Mai vient de sonner. Las enfin de tant de tortures Levons-nous pour man i fes t e r . . . [Arisé, ye slaves o f the cotton mills, Today is the First of May. Tired at last o f so many tortures, Let us rise up in p ro t e s t . . . ]

In a rather different vein, w e detect a distinct evolution from the days when the songster Vi l lemer expressed the hope that somé day there would be "but one Marseillaise for all the people of the wor ld" in his Marseillaise des travailleurs (1873), or later, in 1893, when the teacher Paul Robin took the verses o f a preacher from Nimes and turnéd them into La Marseillaise de la paix. Instead, w e have the biting lines o f Gaston Couté 's La Marseillaise des requins [The Sharks' Marseillaise], wri tten during the French campaign in Morocco:

Al lez petits soldats de Francé Le jour des poir's est arrivé. Pour servir la Haute Fináncé Allez-vous-en lá-bas crever . . . [Get a move on, little French soldiers, The suckers' day has come. To sérve High Fináncé, G o and get yourselves killed over there.]


And in La Paysanne the same composer denounced the "fratricidal Marseillaises" o f different nations while issuing a call to fraternity:

Jetons nos vieux sabots Marchons, marchons En des sillons

Plus larges et plus beaux. [Cast off our old wooden shoes And march on, march on In furrows Ever wider and more beautiful.]

We k n o w how it ended, o f course: the pacifist utópia gave w a y to the Union Sacrée on the eve o f the great hecatomb o f 1914-1918. World War I, it must be said, was one o f the high points in the history o f La Marseillaise. It is no accident that two o f the standard works on the national anthem were published during the war: the patriotic monarchist Louis de Joantho's Triomphe de La Marseillaise came out in 1917, and the w o r k o f the no less patriotic conservat ive republican Louis Fiaux appeared in 1918. W h e n we read books such as these, particularly the latter, which is part scholarly synthesis, part apológia, w e realize how important a role the national anthem played in mobilizing patriotic sentiment. It seemed that it was 1792 all over again: French soldiers sang La Marseillaise on the Marne as they had sung it at Valmy, and heroes who were little more than children, volunteers of sixteen and sev-enteen, died with the national anthem on their lips. Fiaux describes the slaughter o f the Forty-Sixth Regimental Band: on February 28, 1915, at Vauquois, fifteen musicians led by a white-gloved conductor died one after the other for the g lory o f La Marseillaise. Today ' s sacrifices echoed yesterday's: the sinkings o f the cruiser Zeon-Gambetta and the submarine Monge called to mind the earlier loss o f the Vengeur. T h e French war song was played by Al l ied musicians from the Balkans to Great Britain, and in February 1917, Boselli, the Italian prime minister, inaugurated the Interallied Parliament at Romé with these words: "Your national anthem is neither republican nor monarchical. It is the anthem of civilization in arms." This latest bap-tism in blood earned La Marseillaise national as well as international consecration that at first brooked no opposition. The popular songwriter Montehus expressed the sentiments o f the moment in all innocence:

Qu ' i l sach' que dans la fournaise Nous chantons La Marseillaise Car dans ces terribles jours O n laiss' L'Internationale Pour la victoire finale: O n la chant'ra au retour.


[Be it known that in the oven W e sing La Marseillaise, For in these terrible times L'Internationale must be set aside For the final victory: W e ' l l sing it when w e get home.]

Once again La Marseillaise was played in theaters, music halls, and cafés-concerts. T h e Rachel o f the hour was Marthe Chenal , who alsó wrapped herself in the tricolor to sing the national anthem. O v e r her ancient-style tunic, however, she wore a heavy shoulder harness to which was fastened a sword from the theater's prop room. T o top it all off, she wore an Alsatian cap. T h e Paris Opera mounted a new production o f Gossec 's Offrande a la liberté. Even the poets got into the act: in January 1917, Edmond Rostand came to the Opera to give a dramatic reading o f his poem " L e Vol de La Marseillaise." Songwriters and composers produced variations on the fheme, sometimes with embellishments o f their own. A n d the Union Sacrée drew support from somé surprising quarters, including T h é o d o r e Borel , the author o f Les Chansons de la Fleur de Lys, previously known for his fairy-tale depictions o f the Vendée. In all the abundant outpouring o f patriotic music spurred by the conflict, from the works o f renowned musicians such as Saint-Saéns to the miscellany o f "anti-Boche" ditties, allusions to La Marseillaise were inescapable. L o o k i n g b a c k on this impressive production, Maurice Fombeure offered this harsh judgment in 1936: "These had more to do with the clinic than with literature." That perhaps underes-timates the role that this literature may have played in a time o f patriotic exaltation, with all its chauvinistic outgrowths.

Th i s wartime enthusiasm for La Marseillaise culminated on Bastille D a y 1915, when Rouget de Lisle 's ashes were transferred to the Invalides. Since Napoleon 's ashes are alsó housed there, this decision may seem surprising in v iew o f the rela-tions that existed between the two men during their lifetime. There were reasons for it, howeve r : Poincaré had in fact intended Rouge t ' s ashes to be placed in the Panthéon, but such an honor required a vote o f the Chamber, and the proposal came too late, at a time when the Chamber was not in session. Still, the result of this gov ernment misstep was not without significance: the piacing o f the composer's ashes in the Invalides, a military shrine, showed that the honor was being bestowed on Rouget as the author o f a military anthem, a song that could galvanize the troops and set them marching.

A m i d the pomp of a procession that stretched from the Arc de Triomphe to the Invalides, President Poincaré delivered a speech that defined the purpose o f the occasion. La Marseillaise, he said, was a "cry o f vengeance and indignation from a people that will no more now than a hundred and twenty-five years ago bend its knee


before a foreign power," a cry emanating from a "sovereign nation with a passión for independence, whose sons would to a man choose death over servitude." La Marseillaise, that "deliberate affirmation o f French unity," became the pretext for a political speech in which the president rejected any possibility o f a peace that did not restore Francé 's lost provinces.

A s the conflict wore on, however, the overexposure o f La Marseillaise gave rise to widespread reactions o f distaste: the songster J. D e y r m o n described "an evening of bel lowing, or the sabotage o f La Marseillaise" while the journalist R. Ginoux wrote an article under the headline "Rouge t de Lisle Protests" and C . Le Senne spoke contemptuously o f "La Marseillaise o f the tutus." A t first these were merely isolated expressions o f disgust, but as the conflict developed in the rear as well as on the front lines, people began to tire o f La Marseillaise. Róbert pertinently observes that when French and British soldiers fraternized, songs like Tipperary and La Madelon went down more easily than their respective national anthems with troop-ers tired o f orchestrated heroics. Can it really be that the watered-down guardroom lyrics o f La Madelon triumphed over La Marseillaise} W e should read this report not as grounds for indignation but as an index to the mood o f the moment.

The most vehement reactions against La Marseillaise came later, toward the end o f the war and especially in its immediate aftermath, as the drums o f v ic to ry sounded. Wi th the gradual reviva l o f the socialist movement , the criticism was expressed in no uncertain terms. Pierre Brizon, one o f the French delegates to the Kienthal Conference o f 1919, wro te : " W e will not s ing their Marseillaise. T h e y turnéd it into a song for savages. Besides, the king's ugly, wart-ridden toads took it up and croaked it, which left us feeling disgusted. W e wil l sing L'Internationale." Thus behind the apparent triumph, La Marseillaise actually emerged from World War I in a pitiful state.

A Revival of La Marseillaise? (1918 to the Present)

The next turning point—a rather paradoxicai one—occurred somewhere between 1934 and 1936. In circumstances akin to those in which it was born, La Marseillaise, more than ever Francé's official national anthem with its virile accents now steeped in the prestige o f victory, began to attract defenders who would have astonished the Communards o f 1871, the republicans o f 1879, and even good old Jules Fiaux, who concluded his 1918 history by describing the song, formerly a symbol o f "the French nation versus the Ancien Régime allied with the governments o f European fanati-cism and absolutism," as being now a symbol o f "indissoluble national unity and universal humanity." Behind the veterans who now rallied to La Marseillaise and the tricolor loomed the leagues o f the extrémé right, whose goal was to rid themselves of la Gueuse ("the Strumpet," a derogatory term for the Republic). I cannot avoid

FIGURE 2.7 Rude, Le Départ, 1835-36, al ludes to La Marseillaise and n o t t o M.-J. Chénier's Chant du départ.


mentioning that the extremist demonstrators who tried to attack the Palais-Bourbon on February 6, 1934, were singing the verses o f Rouget de Lisle. A m o n g the orga-nizers o f that attack was Le Provost de Launay, the son o f the monarchist deputy who had fought so bitterly against the adoption o f the new national anthem in 1879. Travestied into a symbol o f blind nationalism and adopted by those w h o would bring down the Republic, was La Marseillaise headed for an ignominious end?

Outside o f Francé, however , the song was still an essential accompaniment o f revolutionary movements everywhere. It was played along with ÜInternationale to welcome Lenin back to Russia on April 15, 1917. Even more significant, perhaps, was its role in the funeral ceremonies for victims o f the February 1917 revolution in Saint Petersburg, here described by the French ambassador Chambrun: "Soldiers, workers, students, women and girls marched in solemn ranks, singing a mournful Marseillaise along with Chopin 's Funeral March. This was Russia's first civic burial. You can well imagine how right-minded people felt."

Soviet Russia continued to invoke the legacy o f the French Revolution. In 1932, to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary o f the October Revolut ion, Boris Assaf iev produced a ballet entitled The Flame of Paris, whose theme was the overthrow o f the monarchy on A u g u s t 10, 1792, wi th La Marseillaise o f course in the back-ground. Between 1917 and 1920, La Marseillaise was a persistent feature o f upris-ings across Europe from Germany to Hungary. O n Apri l 15, 1931, at ceremonies marking the advent o f the Spanish Republic, La Marseillaise was played before The Anthem of Riego.

Perhaps the most stirring testimony to the lyrical illusions o f 1917, as hopes o f an imminent All ied victory mingled with hopes aroused by the Russian Revolution, can be found in the memoirs of dancer Isadora Duncan, who recalled an American tour in which she danced La Marseillaise as a symbol of "the hope for freedom, a new be ginning, and civilization everywhere." T o be sure, Duncan 's bold stroke o f setting a dance based on La Marseillaise against Tchaikovsky's Marche Slave, intended as an allusion to the oppression o f the people o f Russia by the czar, evoked a mixed reaction. Later, in 1921, the French public was lukewarm in its reception o f Duncan's improvisation on the theme o f La Marseillaise. It may be that the dancer, whose ideals harked back to the hopes o f the previous century, mistook the nature o f the new revolutionary spirit.

That new spirit manifested itself in Francé in the 1930S. In September 1932, at the funeral o f Pierre Degey te r , w h o had composed the music for ÜInternationale, Marcel Cachin had this to say: "No Marseillaise, no religious music, no religious service ever accomplished a miracle such as this." In 1934, shortly after the riots o f the extrémé right in February, Louis Aragon included a poem entitled "Response to the Jacobins" in his Hourra l'Oural. This is perhaps the most ferocious, most talented, and most squarely aimed attack ever leveled a t . . .


La Marseillaise La Marseillaise avec les soldats de Fourmies . . . La Marseillaise aux colonies La Marseillaise du Comité des Forges La Marseillaise de la social-démocratie.

Quatre ans de Marseillaise avec Les pieds dans la merde et la gueule en sang Marseillaise de Charleroi Marseillaise des Dardanelles Marseillaise de Verdun . . .

These fierce lines need no translation. Aragon goes on to hail the impending death

o f La Marseillaise:

Je salue ici L'Internationale contre La Marseillaise Céde le pas, ő Marseillaise A L'Internationale car voici L'automne de tes jours, voici L 'Octobre oú tombent tes derniers accents . . .

and ends with an appeal that subsumes the most revolutionary lines of La Marseillaise in the accents of L'Internationale:

Qu'un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons O n va bien voir lequel est le plus rouge D u sang du bourgeois ou du sang de l 'ouvrier Debout Peuple travailleur Debout Les damnés de la térre.

Aragon ' s "Response to the Jacobins" must o f course be seen in the context o f February 1934 and the history of the French Communist Party. A t the same time, it is a typical product o f the periodic crises that punctuate the history o f La Marseillaise, whose exact relation to the French Revolution has always been a matter o f passión. It is polemically legitimate, of course, if historically rather unjust for critics shocked by such language to reproach the poet (as somé have been only too eager to do) for a later about-face, which was by no means a recantation, for Aragon never expunged these lines from his collected works.


Within two years, however, the situation had changed. Capping a historic class alliance, the Popular Front led the Communis t Party to revise its position on La Marseillaise, which became, along with the tricolor, the symbol of the new party line. These patriotic values and the historical legacy that came with them could no longer be abandoned to the class enemy. T h e party therefore incorporated them into its own heritage of struggles alongside L'Internationale and the red flag, as Jacques Duclos explained at ceremonies held on July 14,1935, at Buffalo Stádium to mark the oath of allegiance to the Popular Front. His argument, quite Jauréssian in tone, linked the past and the future, the tricolor and the red flag. La Marseillaise, the Communist leader pointed out, "is a revolutionary song, a song o f freedom." A few days later, Maurice T h o r e z added his two cents to a debate whose resolution was far from enjoying unanimous support among Communists. A t a meeting o f the Communist International, he explained the strategy of class alliance behind the reappropriation of the flag and national anthem of Francé: " T h e reactionary bourgeoisie knows full well that [these symbols] signify the alliance o f the petty bourgeoisie and the working class. . . . We do not wish to abandon the flag o f the Great Revolut ion or La Marseillaise o f the soldiers o f the Convention to fascism."

Did the Communist leaders make their case? Léon Blum certainly grasped their point. He marked the first anniversary o f the joint-action pact with an editorial in Le Populaire on July 14, 1936, on the subject o f "Bastille D a y and La Marseillaise." He noted that "for years we have neglected La Marseillaise and Bastille Day, the official song and the official holiday." Nevertheless , he continued to draw a contrast between La Marseillaise as played by the local marching band and La Marseillaise o f August 10, o f nineteenth-century revolutionary movements, and o f Victor H u g ó — a Marseillaise that "soared on wings among the bullets."

The Popular Front rediscovered La Marseillaise. O n June 17, 1936, the left hon-ored the hundredth anniversary of Rouget 's death with a ceremony at Choisy- le-Roi to rival the official ceremony at the Invalides. Maurice Thorez took the opportunity to celebrate the occasion with a now-classic speech in which he extolled "the work o f national reconciliation against the two hundred families." He ended by saying that "to the mingled strains o f La Marseillaise and L'Internationale, wrapped in the rec-onciled folds o f the tricolor and the red flag, we shall build a free, strong, and happy Francé." And on July 14 o f the same year a portrait o f Rouget de Lisle was placed alongside portraits o f Pottier and Degeyter at the base o f the Column o f July.

Not everyone went along with this rehabilitation o f La Marseillaise, however . The reaction o f the right is understandable: L'Action frangaise ran the headline " T o their Internationale, there is only one answer: La Royale," while Le Temps saw the destructive specter o f Marxism behind the left's "nationalist" proclamations. O n the left, anarchists, libertarians, and Trotskyites attacked the new strategy as oppor-tunistic and as a betrayal o f the "pacific internationalist spirit" o f the workers ' move-


ment. T h e histórián Maurice Dommanget believed that he was echoing the authen-tic revolutionary tradition when, after denouncing Rouget de Lisle as a "counter-revolutionary officer" who had written an anthem for the "voracious ruling bour-geoisie ," he went on to attack "radical-communist patriotism." Nevertheless, the evolution o f the Popular Front led more than one early critic to reconsider later on. T h e daily Nouvel Age, which had been quite critical initially, revised its judgment in the wake o f the 1936 Bastille D a y parade: "Contrary to the v iew expressed here pre-viously, what clearly carried the d a y . . . was La Marseillaise not as a nationalist song but as a revolutionary one."

T h e conversion of the Popular Front into words and images produced a number o f works in which La Marseillaise played an important role, among them Jean Renoir 's film o f that title and Arthur Honegger's-1937 score for the short feature Visages de la Francé, which "combined the accents" o f both revolutionary anthems, La Marseillaise and L'Internationale.

T h e antifascist resistance of World War II fulfilled the promise o f the Popular Front by infusing the revolutionary Marseillaise with rich patriotic content. T h e Vichy régime, under no illusions on this score, resorted to the time-honored tactic o f promot ing a rival anthem: Maréchal, nous voila. But La Marseillaise could be heard at illegal demonstrations, in prisons, underground with the Resistance, and before the firing squad. Aragon alluded to it in his "Ballade de celui qui chanta dans les supplices":

II chantait lui sous les balles Les mots sanglant est levé D'une seconde rafale II a fallu l 'achever. Une autre chanson francaise A ses lévres est montée Finissant La Marseillaise Pour toute l'humanité. [He sang, as the bullets hit, T h e words "sanglant est levé" It took a second vol ley T o finish him off. Another French song Came to his lips, Finishing La Marseillaise For all mankind.]

Having stood the test of time, La Marseillaise was never displaced or even challenged by such resistance songs as Le Chant despartisans, which remains a period piece.


When General de Gaulle sang La Marseillaise in Paris and earlier at Chartres and other places on the w a y to the liberation o f Francé, he lent his authority to the new legitimacy o f the national anthem. It was a weakened Marseillaise that emerged from World War I but a regenerated Marseillaise that emerged from World War II.

One might have thought that the b loody struggles o f the Resistance, hav ing brought about the national reconciliation around La Marseillaise that the Popular Front had previously advocated and o f which Gaullism later reaped the benefits, would at last have put an end to the debate. But history is often diffícult to interpret while it is being made, especially in periods o f extended peace such as Europe has now enjoyed for more than fifty years.

During the Co ld War, the debate that began in 1936 continued; the Resistance had not settled the matter. In 1953, Aragon repudiated his "Response to the Jacobins" in his növel Les Communistes, where he credited Maurice Thorez with having "restored La Marseillaise and the tricolor to the people o f Francé": "Underneath this flag and in this music he truly restored the Francé o f the past in its entirety to the Francé o f the future." Meanwhile, as late as 1971, Maurice Dommanget continued to denounce the "monstrous coupl ing o f La Marseillaise and L'Internationale," for which he blamed Communists acting on orders from abroad, a v i e w that he paradoxically shared with Louise Weiss, who, in a series o f novels entitled La Marseillaise (1954), took up the theme o f the Communists ' supposed obedience to the dictates o f for-eigners: " T h e anti-Hitlerian and therefore hawkish Communis t Party should not have opposed civic demonstrations by democrats."

There is no denying, moreover , that even today there remains more than one Marseillaise. Like the nationalist bourgeois consensus o f World War I, the apparent patriotic consensus achieved at the time o f the Liberation around the model pro-posed by the Popular Front was not destined to survive. T o each his own Marseillaise: the right had its version, which it defined in Gaullian terms as "above the parties," but that did not prevent it from taking to the streets on May 13, 1958, just as it did on February 6, 1934. But is there only one right-wing Marseillaise, or are there in fact several? With nationalism as the common denominator, extrémé rightists from the conspirators o f 1958 to the Front National o f today have brandished a muscular Marseillaise, the Marseillaise o f the paratroop commandos who shouted down Serge Gainsbourg's 1977 reggae version o f the national anthem—a silly, totally insignifi-cant provocat ion. T h e liberal right adopted a subtler strategy: in 1974, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing ordered that the national anthem be performed at a slower tempó, thus quite naturally fol lowing the lead o f nineteenth-century conservatives with their "oratorio 'Marseillaise.'" A t the same time, however, there has been a notice-able revival o f Le Chant du départ as a rallying point for the "liberal" Republic.

N o challenge to the reigning interpretation of the national anthem has arisen on the left. In May 1968, more than one component o f the protest movement clearly had


no great enthusiasm for La Marseillaise, yet this did not result in any great intellec-tual debate or widespread shift in attitudes such as occurred between 1934 and 1936. Gainsbourg was no Aragon .

T h i s naive conclusion brings up a more radical question. What remains o f La Marseillaise today? W h o even knows the words? H o w many Frenchmen today are capable o f singing not the three verses that every schoolchild once knew but even just the first verse? Al though La Marseillaise is theoretically taught in elementary schools, it is no longer part o f the compulsory high school repertoire. G r o w i n g ignorance o f the French Revolution, which has alsó vanished from the syllabus in recent decades, prevents people from understanding even in elementary terms how La Marseillaise came to be.

Have "Bouillé's accomplices" finally exacted theirjrevenge? Is La Marseillaise, like the Revolution according to somé, "as dead as a doornail?" Is it obsolete, first, because the French no longer known their own Revolution; second, because the Revolution is less often invoked as a guide for the future; and third, because no one any longer yearns to rush to the borders to defend, in uncertain combat, an imperiled nation?

Inherited cultural artifacts inevitably g row tired with age. There is no point in ending with a mystical incantation, just as there is no point in taking these findings, with their inevitable concomitant o f nostalgia and conventional wisdom, as grounds for inescapable pessimism. T h e history o f La Marseillaise, so rich in so many ways , is so full o f revivals and reappropriations ("marvelous metempsychoses," as Joyce might have said), that any fatál prognosis would be imprudent. W h e n the French need La Marseillaise, they will know where to find it: as in 1936, where there 's a wil l , there 's a way.

B I B L I O G R A P H I C A L NOTES ON LA MARSEILLAISE

La Marseillaise has given rise to a vast literature. Here, I can do no more than provide a glimpse of what is available, listing only essential reference works. I alsó wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the invaluable work of Frédéric Róbert, the leading expert on the subject.

G E N E R A L W O R K S , D I C T I O N A R I E S , AND A N T H O L O G I E S

Massin, Jean, ed. Histoire de la mtisique (Paris: Livre-Club Diderot, 1981), 2 vols. Róbert, Frédéric. La Marseillaise, Larousse de la Musique, 2: 977—978 and 1358—1359. Vernillat, Francé, and Jacques Charpentreau. Dictionnaire de la chanson frangaise (Paris:

Larousse, 1968). Pierre, Constant. Les Hymnes et chansons de la Revolution frangaise, survey and catalogue with

historical, analytical, and bibliographical notes (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1904). This is a fundamental reference work, a masterpiece of scholarship from the positivist era.


Barbier, Pierre, and Francé Vernillat. Histoire de Francépar les chansons, vol. 8, La Revolution frangaise (Paris: Gallimard, 1961).

Brécy, Róbert. Florilége de la chanson révolutionnaire (Paris: Editions Hier et Demain, 1978).

HISTORICAL APPROACHES

The years between the end of the nineteenth century and the end of World War I saw the publication of a spate of histories of La Marseillaise, including such major works as the first two listed below:

Fiaux, Louis. La Marseillaise, son histoire dans l'histoire des Frangais depuis 1392 (Paris: Fasquelle, 1918).

Tiersot, Julién. Rouget de Lisle, son oeuvre, sa vie (Paris: Delagrave, 1892). The fruits of later scholarship were incorporated in the same author's Histoire de La Marseillaise (Paris: Delagrave, 1916).

Joantho, Louis de. Le Triomphe de La Marseillaise (Paris: Plon, 1917). This curious work reflects a conservative monarchist's embrace of La Marseillaise during wartime.

A sampling of titles from 1918 to the present: Wendel, Hermán. DieMarseillaise, biographie einerHymne (Zürich: Európa Verlag, 1936). A

work by a Germán antifascist that reflects the time in which it was written. Fryklund, Dániel. La Marseillaise en Allemagne; La Marseillaise dans les pays scandinaves;

and English Editions of La Marseillaise (Helsingborg: Schmidts Bocktryckeri, 1936). Three pamphlets by an admirer of La Marseillaise dealing with the international reception of the French anthem.

Dommanget, Maurice. De La Marseillaise de Rouget de Lisle a LTnternationale d'Eugene Pottier: Les legons de l'histoire (Paris: Librairie de Parti Socialiste, 1938).

Delfolie, Valérie. La Marseillaiseparoles et musique de Rouget de Lisle: Essai de reconstitution historique et de critique littéraire (Montmorillon: Editions Rossignol, 1965).

Parés, Philippe. Qui est Tauteur de La Marseillaise? (Paris: Editions Musicales Minerva, 1974). See alsó the review by Jacques Chailley in Revue de musicologie, vol. 62, no. 2 (1976).

Mauron, Marié. La Marseillaise (Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin, 1968).

WORKS OF FRÉDÉRIC RÓBERT

Róbert, Frédéric. "Des Oeuvres musicales inspirées par le théme de La Marseillaise de 1792 81919" (doctoral thesis defended at the University of Paris IV, 1977; unpublished). This work of fundamental importance is unfortunately difficult to obtain. Somé of the infor-mation it contains may be gleaned from the following articles.

. Lettres apropos de La Marseillaise, Centre de recherches d'études et d'editions de cor-respondances du X I X e siécle, University of Paris IV (Paris, Presses Universitaires de Francé, 1980).

- . "Genése et destin de La Marseillaise," La Pensée, special issue on "Mass média-idéologie-voie frangaise" (July 1981).


. "Maurice Thorez et La Marseillaise," Cahiers de l'Institut Maurice-Thore^ (January-February 1972).

. "Zola face á La Marseillaise," Zola Colloquium, Limoges, June 1969; proceedings

published in Cahiers naturalistes (October 1980).

And in the daily press:

. "Rouge et tricolore," L'Humanité (October 5, 1982).

. "Marseillaise et Internationale, Heurt et réconciliation de deux hymnes francais " L'Humanité (February 3, 1984).

LA MARSEILLAISE IN T H E E Y E S O F C O N T E M P O R A R Y H I S T O R I A N S

Leaving musicologists and biographers -aside, no one has yet written a study of La Marseillaise from the contemporary standpoint of social history and the history of mental-ités. There is nevertheless valuable information to be gleaned from:

Perrot, Michelle. Ouvriers francais en gréve (1880-1890) (Paris—The Hague: Mouton, 1974), which deals with the role of La Marseillaise in the French workers' movement of the late nineteenth century.

W O R K S R E L A T E D T O LA MARSEILLAISE

The following are merely suggestions of key places to look:

—Speeches and articles by politicians who were obliged to take a position on La Marseillaise, such as

Jaurés, Jean. "Marseillaise et Internationale," La Petité République socialiste (August 30,1903. In addition one would want to consult the works of Léon Blum, Maurice Thorez, and Jacques Duclos (see Oeuvres complétes and Mémoires).

—Novels, poems, and works of fiction. For the contemporary period, for example, we have two works in very different styles:

Weiss, Louise. La Marseillaise, vol. 1, Allons enfants de la patrie (Paris: Gallimard, 1945); vol. 2, Le Jour de gloire est arrivé (Paris: Gallimard, 1947); vol. 3, L'Étendard sanglant est leve (Paris: Gallimard, 1947).

Aragon, Louis. "Réponse aux Jacobins," in the collection Hourra l'Oural, in Oeuvres complétes (Paris: Gallimard, ????), 6:138. But alsó L'Homme communiste (Paris: Gallimard, 1953)' 2 :

378. These two works represent two phases in the evolution of Aragon's sensibility, phases that themselves reflect two historical moments.

la marseillaise

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